US-Israel War on Iran – until 2029?

I shocked myself listening to a PBS segment a few weeks ago in which David “Bobo” Brooks said he wouldn’t be surprised if the current war with Iran is still going on in January 2029. (1) I’m so used to rolling my eyes at what Bobo has to say about wars, I was surprised that my immediate reaction was, well, he could be right about that!

Given the negative effects of a continuing war on the world economy, that seems hard to imagine. But we could be looking at just that. Scott Lucas recently commented on how the war is continuing and spreading: (2)

The problem is that the only way of avoiding a years-long war is for the US to pull out of the war. Robert Pape in the podcasts below talks about why that turns out to be a difficult decision for leaders to make.

But Trump did make a decision to do just that in Afghanistan in the withdrawal agreement he negotiated with the Taliban in 2020, during his first term. Sylvie Kauffmann reported for Le Monde English:

To begin with, Trump negotiated his withdrawal agreement with the Taliban on his own. Alone, meaning not only were Western partners not consulted, but even the Afghan government was excluded from the talks, a Taliban condition that the US president accepted.

The main concern for the Republican president was to succeed where Barack Obama had failed. He wanted to boast in his 2020 campaign for re-election that he was bringing the boys home. The details of the deal mattered little. [my emphasis] (3)

It was a sloppy deal, which didn’t even involve the US client government in Afghanistan, only the US and the Taliban. But it was left to the Biden Administration to implement the withdrawal in 2021. And Trump is still trashing Biden for the withdrawal from Afghanistan on terms Trump himself agreed to. Would the actual withdrawal itself have been better executed if Trump had been re-elected? Theoretically it’s possible, though it’s hard to imagine. Impossible to imagine, actually.

Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan described the withdrawal as follows:

The president [Biden] had deep conviction on this issue. He thought we had to end the era of forever wars. Whenever he posed the question, how and when does this end, other than with the US just deciding we are calling it, he did not get a satisfactory answer. The answer tended to be one more year and then one more year, and then, finally, President Trump signed a deal with the Taliban that set the date of May 1 2021, for all American troops to be out of Afghanistan. And that was the situation president Biden confronted when he came in. So he had a choice: he could either let May pass and go back to war with the Taliban, at which point he would have had to add troops because Trump had drawn us down to 2,500. So send more forces to fight and die in Afghanistan in the war’s 20th year. Or choose to follow through on a withdrawal, which we then executed over the next four months.

And for President Biden, part of this overall story of renewing the sources of American strength was also taking the massive strategic liability of an endless war in which America was spending blood and treasure and bringing it to a close. And you said it all went wrong. What I would say is that the withdrawal had significant challenges and tragedy, the loss of 13 American service members. But, sitting here today in 2025, I would be happy to debate people who say, no, no no, we should still be in Afghanistan. [my emphasis] (4)

That was a case where just deciding to leave was the only real way from keeping on with an indefinite war that was doing nothing for American interests. Obama as President could have and should have pulled US forces out – but that’s another story. So just pulling out of a forever war is something that Trump knows about.

The huge difference between that war and the current one against Iran is that Afghanistan did not have the ability to bring on a worldwide depression. And the Iran War has involved numerous countries in the Middle in direct combat operations, including Israel. A US exit from the war on terms that will fully restore traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait being blocked by Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen will have to involve the US putting some substantive restraints on Israel. Iran has been demanding that an agreement would have to include Israeli withdrawal from territory it is illegally occupying in Lebanon and Syria.

And one weakness that the US, Israel, and their allies have is the present shortage of missile interceptors. Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recently observed recently:

[T]he U.S. arsenal is depleted. Some elements are quite depleted. We looked at seven munitions that have been heavily used in the war against Iran. Half of them, we've used a quarter to a third, and about half of them, we've used half of the available inventories, and that creates a what we call a window of vulnerability. There are alternatives, but the alternatives involve greater risk. So it will take several years - one to five - to replace these and then another several years after that to get to where the war planners want to be. …

There are the air and missile defense munitions, Patriot is probably the one most people have heard about. And then there are long-range attack munitions. Tomahawk is probably the one that people have heard of. [my emphasis] (5)

In other words, it would require some complex diplomacy by the Trump 2.0 regime. And we haven’t seen much evidence that they are capable of such a thing. So, we really could be looking at Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb Straits still closed in January of 2029. And much, much more regional damage in between. Having a US Administration with no actual strategic concepts for foreign policy and no evident ability to conduct normal, competent diplomacy is really a problem.

Israel, of course, remains a major factor and influence on US policy in the Middle East. Given that the Israeli goal for years has been to weaken all potentially rival government in the area while annexing more and more territory contingent to Israel, the current Israeli government is presumably happy about the level of destruction and disruption the US-Israel War on Iran has brought about.

Another legacy from Trump 1.0 is, of course, the cancellation of the JCPOA, the solid nuclear agreement that the Obama Administration negotiated with Iran. Trump in his first term, acting in concert with the demands of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pulled out of the agreement which acted as an effective guarantee that Iran would not acquire a nuclear weapon.

Robert Pape has been doing a lot of interviews this year on the Iran War, which he has been wargaming for years and consulting for the US military on the topic. He presents a sobering picture of the present stance of the Trump 2.0 regime on the war. (6)

In the second podcast at the same YouTube channel, Pape addresses the ways in which Russia has also been affected by an escalation trap in the Russia-Ukraine War, another conflict which Trump 2.0’s lack of strategy and competent diplomacy hasn’t been able to stop. (7) Despite Trump’s infamous campaign promise to stop that war on his first day in office.

Notes:

(1) Brooks and Marcus on the Iran conflict becoming a 'forever war'. PBS NewsHour YouTube channel 07/25/2026. <https://youtu.be/PfqRRLcWFRQ?si=EOu5wMWAnbzxHH8t> (Accessed: 2026-27-07).

(2) US War on Iran Becomes An "Uncontained War" Across Region. Scott Lucas Worldview YouTube channel 09/12/20206. <https://youtu.be/ZLZts79_egU?si=EUIN1PsoYD6ZYcCG> (Accessed: 2026-12-09).

(3) Kauffmann, Sylvie (2025): The 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan, a solo decision. Le Monde English 06/19/2025. <https://www.lemonde.fr/en/history/article/2025/06/19/the-2021-us-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-a-solo-decision_6742489_157.html ?srsltid=AfmBOoqoZzZqKT2R4Qagmuopae2deEzfszOHkMvfDtK0r6ILSRpMI008> (Accessed: 2026-27-07).

(4) Rachman, Gideon (2025): Transcript: A foreign policy debrief with Jake Sullivan. Financial Times 05/29/2025. <https://www.ft.com/content/515f4d78-be95-4e09-9be2-8663d0f6d2ec?syn-25a6b1a6=1> (Accessed: 2026-27-07).

(5) Defense strategy expert reviews how the Iran War drains vital U.S. missile inventories. NPR 07/25/2026. <https://www.npr.org/2026/07/25/nx-s1-5904597/defense-strategy-expert-reviews-how-the-iran-war-drains-vital-u-s-missile-inventories> (Accessed: 2026-27-07).

(6) Iran War Expert EXPOSES Trump ESCALATION TRAP!!! (1 of 2). Legal AF YouTube channel 07/26/2026. (Accessed: 2026-26-07).

(7) Iran War Expert REVEALS Trump's CATASTROPHIC FAILURE (2 of 2). Legal AF YouTube channel 07/26/2026. <https://youtu.be/oU_urdNNJJE?si=VFX4iTZc63W9GLV2> (Accessed: 2026-27-07).

25 Years Since the 9/11 Attack

Deutsche Welle English has this new retrospective of nearly and hour and a half on the 9/11 attack. (1)

That documentary describes the event as “the day the world changed forever.”

It’s the sort of platitude that such retrospectives often use. The standard where-we-you-on-that-day anecdotes are featured in the DW documentary, as well. It’s understandable that media retrospectives would use those freely, because it engages personal memories among those who were old enough to remember where they were that day. (I was also somewhere. I won’t bore anyone with the story here.)

Osama bin Laden’s grandiose plan didn’t play out exactly as he hoped: to the extent we know what he was actually hoping. It seems clear that he expected the US to overreact and do a lot of damage to itself and its position in the world. And that did happen. From today’s perspective, he could have done much more to achieve that goal by pouring lots of Saudi oil money into making Donald Trump a Presidential candidate. But it was difficult in 2001 to know what the self-destruction of a unipolar superpower might look like. We have a much better idea now.

As the documentary notes, a huge increase in Western hostility toward Islam in general was one of the subsequent results, with the enthusiastic encouragement of US neoconservatives and the US’ close ally Israel. Now, 25 years later we’re in yet another Forever War with Iran. Which almost certainly will to even much more damage to the US and the Middle East than it already has.

I’m tempted to use the phrase “chickens coming home to roost,” just because it drives rightwingers crazy. But the term “blowback” popularized by Chalmers Johnson seems more useful. As Johnson himself wrote the month after the 9/11 attacks:

The suicidal assassins of September 11, 2001, did not “attack America,” as our political leaders and the news media like to maintain; they attacked American foreign policy. Employing the strategy of the weak, they killed innocent bystanders who then became enemies only because they had already become victims. Terrorism by definition strikes at the innocent in order to draw attention to the sins of the invulnerable. The United States deploys such overwhelming military force globally that for its militarized opponents only an “asymmetric strategy,” in the jargon of the Pentagon, has any chance of success. When it does succeed, as it did spectacularly on September 11, it renders our massive military machine worthless: The terrorists offer it no targets. On the day of the disaster, President George W. Bush told the American people that we were attacked because we are “a beacon for freedom” and because the attackers were “evil.” In his address to Congress on September 20, he said, “This is civilization’s fight.” This attempt to define difficult-to-grasp events as only a conflict over abstract values–as a “clash of civilizations,” in current post-cold war American jargon–is not only disingenuous but also a way of evading responsibility for the “blowback” that America’s imperial projects have generated.

“Blowback” is a CIA term first used in March 1954 in a recently declassified report on the 1953 operation to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. It is a metaphor for the unintended consequences of the US government’s international activities that have been kept secret from the American people. The CIA’s fears that there might ultimately be some blowback from its egregious interference in the affairs of Iran were well founded. Installing the Shah in power brought twenty-five years of tyranny and repression to the Iranian people and elicited the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution. The staff of the American embassy in Teheran was held hostage for more than a year. This misguided “covert operation” of the US government helped convince many capable people throughout the Islamic world that the United States was an implacable enemy. [emphasis added] (2)

Johnson’s concept of blowback was not about karma or morality. It was about taking a practical understanding of possible negative consequences of foreign policy action. It’s about be realistic about cause-and-effect much more so than it is about passing legal or moral judgments on particular actions taken – though such judgements also need to be made.

Important related event sequences

Johnson relates that a big part of this sequence of events was the installation of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in Iraq in 1953 by supporting the overthrown of the more democratic government headed by Mohammad Mossadeq (1882-1967). Operationally that coup was a success that benefitted US and British foreign policy at the time and made international oil corporations very happy – particularly the American ones. (3)

That worked out well from Washington’s official point of view for 27 years, until the Islamic Revolution of 1979. In the 47 years since then, the US has been dealing with the blowback. The 1979 Revolution and the taking of American hostages became a turning point for the view of Islam in general which many policymakers adopted, and which led them to think that actively supporting the Muslim rebels against the Soviet Union and the government in Afghanistan that it backed was a splendid idea. Neocons to this day still cherish the idea that US support for the “brave mujahedeen freedom fighters,” as they were described by the American press was the fatal blow to the existence of the Soviet Union.

Juan Cole wrote in 2018 (during the Trump 1.0 Presidency):

It’s hard today even to imagine that, in the late 1980s, the rightwing Christian Voice Magazine published a “candidate’s biblical scoreboard,” urging its readers (and potential voters) to rate their politicians by how “biblically” they cast their ballots in Congress. One key measure of this: Did that legislator support the anti-Communist Muslim jihadis in Afghanistan, a cause warmly supported by evangelist Pat Robertson in his 1988 presidential campaign? Now, attempting to appeal to twenty-first-century evangelicals, President Trump has announced that “Islam hates us.”

The kaleidoscope of geopolitics and Islamophobia is now spinning so fast that it should make our heads spin, too. At times, it seems as if Donald Trump is the anti-Ronald Reagan of the twenty-first century, idolizing former KGB operative Vladimir Putin, but seeing former U.S. allies in the Muslim world like Pakistan as purveyors of “nothing but lies and deceit” — until, that is, with bewildering rapidity, he suddenly gives us the “good” (that is, oil-rich) Muslims again, willingly performing a sword dance with the Saudi royals, seemingly entirely comfortable with the scimitar of the Saracen. [empjasis added] (4)

The most famous of those brave mujahedeen freedom fighters was the son of a wealthy Saudi businessman, a guy named Osama bin Laden, who was to become America’s Enemy Number One after “Nine Eleven.”

The ties of the US intelligence agencies and in particular those of one-time CIA Director George H.W. Bush and his two-generation Presidential family to the Sunni fundamentalist Saudi monarch were a key element in the process that gave rise to US support of the brave mujahedeen freedom fighters in Afghanistan. (5)

In the 1980s while the US was gleefully assistance the anti-Soviet brave mujahedeen freedom fighters, it didn’t forget Iran in the meantime. St. Ronald Reagan as President managed to do friendly arms-for-hostages deals with Iran to help covertly the pro-dictatorship Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua. But from 1980 to 1988, the US was also actively helping our loyal Iraqi ally Saddam Hussein wage war against Iran, including providing him with chemical weapons and nerve gas for that remarkably bloody war.

But then our solid ally Saddam decided to seize some of the territory of Kuwait, an oil-rich company friendly to Saudi Arabia, so President Bush Sr. invaded in 1991 to push Iraq out of Kuwait. This was an intervention sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council, a conventional war to push out the forces of an illegal invader. But what the generals call “war termination” has often proved to be very tricky for the US. And so it was with this war.

Having accomplished its main mission, Bush Sr. and his Defense Secretary, Dark Lord Dick Cheney, decided to go for regime change in Baghdad. They encouraged Iraqi Kurds to stage an uprising, which Saddam’s government crushed without the US doing much to support our Kurdish allies. So the US imposed a drastic economic sanctions regime against Iraq that basically led to the Iraq War of 2003-on, whose results are now well known.

And when the collapse of Yugoslavia led to a round of Balkan Wars, the Clinton Administration engaged in the Kosovo War, whose ambiguous results are still a major headache for the foreign policies of European countries. The Clinton Administration also engaged in the intensive four-day bombing campaign against Iraq that was bizarrely designated Operation Desert Fox. (Desert Fox was the nickname of the German general Erwin Rommel of World War II renown.)

In retrospect, the Forever Wars were already underway.

The US invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attack and quickly dispersed the Al Quida forces there, although the Bush II Administration held back from a concentrated strike against their forces when they had withdrawn into the Tora Bora mountains. The Shrub Bush Administration was addicted to a neocon obsession that terrorism was always some form of state-sponsored terrorism, and so continued a war against the Taliban government that lasted until 2021, when the US left with the Taliban once again in control of Afghanistan. (6)

And now we’re in the current Forever War with Iraq. Led by a chowder-headed President who has no idea how to get out of it.

Notes:

(1) 9/11 - The day that changed the world. DW Documentary YouTube channel 09/10/2026. <https://youtu.be/ppUSZlntc7M?si=SfD5nlvQcjFwBUh4> (Accessed: 2026-11-09).

(2) Johnson, Chalmers (2001): Blowback: US actions abroad have repeatedly led to unintended, indefensible consequences. The Nation 09/27/2026/2001. <https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/blowback/> (Accessed: 2026-11-09).

(3) Lindsay, James (2026): The 1953 Overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq. Council on Foreign Relations 08/19/2026. <https://www.cfr.org/articles/the-1953-overthrow-of-iranian-prime-minister-mohammad-mosaddeq> (Accessed: 2026-11-09).

(4) Cole, Juan (2018): Hating Muslims in the age of Trump: The new Islamophobia looks like the old McCarthyism. Le Monde diplomatique English 10/10/2018. <https://mondediplo.com/openpage/hating-muslims-in-the-age-of-trump> (Accessed: 2026-11-09).

(5) See Craig Unger’s books House of Bush, House of Saud (2004) and The Fall of the House of Bush (2007).

(6) The U.S. War in Afghanistan. Council on Foreign Relations 09/27/2022. <https://www.cfr.org/articles/us-war-afghanistan> (Accessed: 2026-11-09).

Haaretz has a new report about Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of warning about the October 7 attack in 2023

Another report about the generally disgraceful career of Benjamin Netahnyahu. (1)

These were the final days of September 2023. Terrorist attacks inflamed the West Bank, masses of Gazans regularly protested at the border fence, and the country was reeling from internal conflict over the judicial coup laws. Anyone watching the events with clear eyes could sense that an escalation was lurking around every corner.

UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed – known as MBZ – was particularly concerned. "He spoke with me about this often in the months leading up to the war," recounts President Isaac Herzog, who maintains friendly relations with bin Zayed. "He constantly conveyed messages that the situation needed to be defused. He even sent a special envoy to Israel who met with the prime minister. The emir seemed to sense that the area was on the verge of explosion."

If you thought Netanyahu’s reputation couldn’t get any worse …

Breaking Points reports on the story: (2)

Sam and Emma also commented about it on The Majority Report: (3)

Notes:

(1) Eldar, Shlomi & Yuval, Ruth (2026): Revealed: Netanyahu Received an Explicit Warning Days Before Oct. 7. He Didn't Brief Israel's Security Chiefs. Haaretz 09/08/2026. Gift link: <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-09-08/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/netanyahu-got-an-explicit-warning-before-oct-7-he-didnt-brief-security-chiefs/000001a0-7a3b-d7d5-a9fc-7eff3d0f0000?gift=40c25aefb3a54c5bb14053500d89ac52&fbclid=IwY2xjawUOiYJwZG9mBWV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR7IPWPvq7xAlGosnSBAn5ejnOMlth0uDtwS5HeOtz43lfZYWotReLCHAPtNJQ_aem_chOhwIO9scxZD1G-z74jHg> (Accessed: 2026-09-09).

(2) Bibi Warned Of 10/7 Attack & Did Nothing. Breaking Points YouTube channel 09/09/2026. <https://youtu.be/Nk1m1RvFESA?si=WgoQWmcMFdj2cF_u> (Accessed: 2026-09-09).

(3) Report: Netanyahu Was Warned About Oct 7 Attacks And Did Nothing. The Majority Report YouTube channel 09/09/2026. <https://youtu.be/d5W0a3VOc9Q?si=d7zXk4wzCMlGo3RL> (Accessed: 2026-09-09).

“Meanwhile, Republicans are a mess.”

Two recent commentaries offer evaluations of the streagth and shortcomings of some of the major anti-Trump themes.

One is from Ben Rhodes, who was a speechwriter in Obama’s 2008 campaign, a Deputy National Security Adviser in the Obama Administration, and the brother of David Rhodes, a former president of CBS News. He now co-chairs the National Security Action NGO with Jake Sullivan. (1)

He distinguishes three trends among what quickly became known during Trump 1.0 as Resistance Liberals, or even just the Resistance. He is not impressed by the impact of “Never Trumpers,” usually conservatives and even hardline conservatives, who at least had sense enough to see that Trump was a serious mess:

[A]lmost all this energy existed online or in cable news segments. There was no wave of Republicans away from Trump in the physical world. The attention generated could juice follower counts, sell books, and raise money, but it was inherently preaching to the hyper-political converted. Still, Democrats continued to celebrate Never Trumpers through 2024 – Liz Cheney was even enlisted as a leading surrogate for Kamala Harris – ignoring the fact that there was little evidence of a non-elite Never Trump coalition (and much evidence that people of all political persuasions weren’t nostalgic for the pre-Trump Republican Party). [emphasis added]

Now during Trump 2.0, Trump’s approval among Republicans has sunk to what looks suspiciously like the lowest point imaginable that it can reach. (After all, some non-trivial part of the Republican Party are just plain authoritarians.)

Rhodes argues that criticisms of Trump that stayed stuck on high-minded criticisms of how he was eroding important norms – while not constantly reminding concrete examples of how that hurt normal people’s lives – to some extent “played into Trump’s narrative of a Deep State hellbent on sabotaging him.” Looking at Alex Vindman’s Senate primary race in Florida this year in which he outspent his opponent Angie Nixon by several times over, Rhodes observes, “Democratic Socialist Angie Nixon’s message was grittier, more in tune with the anger and hurt people are feeling at the community level with both Trump and a Democratic Party that failed them. She beat him by double digits.”

It would be difficult to argue with this conclusion of Rhodes’:

As painful as it has been to learn, … Trump wasn’t an aberration. At minimum, he’s symbiotic with what has happened to the Republican Party and American conservatism in the polarized age of social media and right-wing media. More alarmingly, he reflects deeply embedded aspects of the American psyche (xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment and racialized backlash; a cult of success and celebrity and an odd affinity for con men), a ferocious backlash to globalization and the elites who trumpeted it, and a uniquely stubborn brand of nationalist strongman politics that is ascendent around the globe.

As appealing as Barack Obama’s message of no-red-America/no-blue-America sounded at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 may have sounded, the reality is that the Republican Party is now dominated by people who celebrate having masked, armed ICE agents prowling American cities looking for anyone who they think is Latino or Haitian – some of whom have been committing acts of state terror. When it comes to using our votes to defend democracy and the basic rule of law: today there unfortunately is a “red” American political party that supports ICE violence and levels of corruption in the federal government unparalleled in US history.

Meanwhile, everyone who is serious about defending the democratic system and having a government that is both decent and effective for ordinary people and not just for TechBro oligarchs, are on a very different side than the Trumpists. And those people really are a resistance to the Trumpists authoritarian project.

Noah Berlatsky also takes a look at the (lazy) media narrative of “Democrats in disarray” in a piece called “Democrats in array,” in which he focuses on how the party base and unsuccessful primary candidates pulled together in the post-primary period. (2)

Berlatsky doesn’t put much stock in the suggestion of New York Times reporter and commentator Michelle Cottle that Trump was able to come into power due to “the excesses of woke.” But if the virtues of Republican Asleepism are new epidemics of preventable diseases, tainted food, and even a military that can’t afford to pay its soldiers but keeps demanding more money for weapons manufacturers – it’s rather hard to see where there are huge constituencies for such things.

He also was not impressed with an argument in The Hill that “Democrats’ progressive surge could complicate [House Democratic Leader Hakeem] Jeffries’s path to unity.” This could be true – if the Democrats were to go back to a 1992-like concept of a Party “big tent” that would include hardline opponents of abortion rights but exclude anyone who thought that the wealthiest TechLords should pay something closer to a fair share of taxes.

The old Big Tent was happy to have a conservative like Joe Lieberman, even after he campaigned for Republican John McCain for President in 2008. (It was a historically strange and even sad moment when John Kerry after that election welcomed Lieberman back into the Democratic Caucus without even demanding he lose his seniority.) And that was decades after the time when the liberal/conservative ideological split in Congress crossed both parties. Today, the notion of a “liberal Republican” in the US seems like a completely oxymoron. Even Never Trumpers who would adore having Liz Cheney as President are leery about calling themselves something so leftie as “liberal Republican.”

In 2026 so far, we haven’t heard many progressive winners of Democratic primaries demanding the immediate nationalization of Amazon and Google. Although those polluting, energy-sucking AI data centers that drive up everyone’s heating and cooling bills don’t exactly seem to be as popular as championship football games or Taylor Swift.

Berlatsky is also singularly unimpressed with the Republican and press obsession with the Republicans “Hasan Piker” bogeyman. He also notes, “a conversation in which [Piker] argued that Zionist propaganda can increase antisemitism has been presented (duplicitously) as an antisemitic diatribe, though this is a point also made by many progressive Jews (including me).” He also notes of Michigan Democratic Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, “A big part of the reason for El-Sayed’s lead is a factor that national media hardly ever mentions: [his Republican opponent] Mike Rogers is a Trump lackey who is very unpopular. A recent poll puts his favorability at 11 points underwater, while El-Sayed’s favorability is at plus 1.”

Centrists and pundits stuck in 40-year-old stereotypes and media clichés might want to take a moment to reflect on the fact that the Democratic Party that elected Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson as Presidents included inveterate white racists like Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, and James Eastland. The splits in the Democratic Party in 2026 look like friendly tennis matches compared to those days. (Which does not mean that there are no real disagreements over serious matters.)

And for anyone who actually thinks currently nominated Democratic candidates like El-Sayed and Angie Nixon are some kind of left-of-center versions of the Thurmonds and Wallaces of not so long ago, there’s bad news for you: You’ve become a Trumpist Republican.

But the YouTube channel called “The Resistance” does produce some inspired protest songs! (The short intro in an imitation Merle Haggard voice is a nice touch.) (3)





This essay was first posted at the ProDA-Progressive Democrats Abroad Substack.

Notes:

(1) Rhodes, Ben (2026): Where the Resistance Went Wrong. Notes on the Stories We Tell 08/20/2026. <https://benrhodes1.substack.com/p/where-the-resistance-went-wrong> (Accessed: 2026-02-09).

(2) Berlatsky, Noah (2026): Democrats in array. Public Notice 09/01/2026. <https://www.publicnotice.co/p/democrats-in-array> (Accessed: 2026-01-09).

(3) Don’t You Wish He Was More Like Dolly? The Resistance YouTube channel 08/26/2026. <https://youtu.be/oI8j3xsmYJk?si=LkdrP4C232sUcrr8&t=212> (Accessed: 2026-01-09).

The European far right’s demagoguery over immigration

Le Monde English has been reporting on how the far-right has been surviving and sometimes improving their position by demagoguing the immigration issue:

It is an illusion to believe that once the far right gets what it wants, it might pause its demands. In Brussels, pressure from Italian leader Giorgia Meloni, allied with Danish Social Democrat Mette Frederiksen, has not abated. Together, they led 22 out of 27 member states to condemn what they saw as Spain's negligence during the Ceuta crisis in July, when 50,000 Moroccans entered the Spanish enclave. As negotiations resume on the common EU budget, the two leaders are demanding that the Union finance return hubs for migrants. The European Commission has consistently stated it will not foot the bill. (1)

The sudden influx of over 70 thousand immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers into the Spanish city of Ceuta from neighboring Morocco in late July gave European xenophobes a new opportunity to promote fear and hatred against foreigners – because that’s what xenophobes do.

As of the end of August, Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez took an interesting diplomatic position:

The prime minister carefully avoided blaming Morocco for the crisis, instead attributing the surge to human-smuggling mafias, as well as to online campaigns orchestrated by Russia, Israel and “an international far-right group that always uses migration not only to attack Spain but also Europe, and divide it.”

“Continuing to spread defamatory lies will not distract from Sánchez’s disgraceful failure to manage his country’s affairs,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on X in response to Sánchez’s interview. (2)

The Guardian reports:

As many as 141 people are thought to have died trying to enter the Spanish enclave at the end of July. The influx of about 70,000 men, women and children unleashed a political crisis, a humanitarian emergency and reignited tensions within the EU over immigration.

Despite speculation that Rabat may have engineered the mass crossing as a means of showing its displeasure at Spain’s rapprochement with Algeria, Sánchez said there was nothing to indicate the involvement of the Moroccan authorities.

“There’s no information from any intelligence agency that raises doubts over the involvement of Moroccan authorities,” he told Cadena Ser radio on Monday. “Cooperation with Morocco is frankly positive. I’d like to stress that we need to be aware that this crisis can be resolved only through cooperation – and not through a lack of trust in Morocco, which would only further aggravate the already complex situation we have in Ceuta.”

Sánchez said fake news had been pumped out on social media accounts “associated with Russia, Israel and the international far right that always use migration to attack not just Spain but also Europe”. (3)

That last point is extremely important. He’s warning fellow Europeans that pandering to xenophobic agitators plays nicely into the hands of unfriendly actors like Russia. With the German government as of September 1 directly blaming Russia for the strange incident of armed drones showing up at the Leipzig airport, that’s a not-so-subtle reminder that they have good reason not to boost the far right’s propaganda against immigrants.

Israel and the US are angry with Spain because it banned the use of Spanish airspace for military flights taking part in the illegal war of aggression the US and Israel launched against Iran in February. So that is at least plausible, as is the (unspecific) reference to a far right group. But it is also hard to ignore that the governments of the US, Russia, and Israel all in various ways currently encourage and defend far-right xenophobic parties and groups in Europe. And, yes, those xenophobic parties include a lot of supporters with antisemitic sentiments, to put it mildly.

But it’s also doesn’t seem plausible that the Moroccan government played no significant role because of the large numbers of people crossing the border in such a short time. And surely it was very aware of the massive social media campaign targeting Moroccan’s leading up to that situation. Spain opposes Morocco’s demand to take over Western Sahara. And Morocco is also part of the US-backed Abraham Accords with Israel.

There certainly are lots of provocative incidents that seem to be emanating from Putin’s Russia, including attempts to interfere in European elections. That kind of interference is tricky to define. But there are national and international laws and established diplomatic practices to define which of those are legitimate and which not.

Le Monde recently reported:

France has also faced highly targeted political destabilization operations. In early August, the Paris public prosecutor's office opened an investigation into suspected Russian interference targeting two of Emmanuel Macron's former prime ministers, Gabriel Attal (Renaissance, the centrist party founded by Macron) and Edouard Philippe (center-right Horizons), as well as the Member of the European Parliament Raphaël Glucksmann (center-left Place Publique). All three, who are candidates in the 2027 presidential election, filed complaints after the circulation of deepfakes and fake news reports produced by media outlets alleging they had health problems or had committed acts of corruption. Viginum, the government agency responsible for combating foreign digital interference, lamented the publicity surrounding these operations, which, according to the agency, provides "greater visibility to content that is seen by very few citizens." (4)

Overblown fears of immigration are often more like mass panic or mass delusion than any kind of practical approach to or understanding of immigration issues. So a carefully orchestrated campaign that some countries or group of countries like that over the Ceuta incident in July can have damaging political effects if the pro-democracy parties are willing and able to direct discredit the scare narratives.

Eric Albert reports on an important report on a 2026 study published by the European Central Bank (ECB), Shaping Europe’s future: innovation, growth and stability by Giovanni Peri. (5) That report says in its opening Abstract:

OECD countries experienced declining native population growth and rising net immigration over 1990-2024. [I.e., a quarter of a century] We compile a new dataset of net immigration rates to OECD countries from all origins and show that most of the increase came from non-OECD countries and was predominantly high-skilled. Push factors, network effects, and policy indices explain little of the large cross-country heterogeneity in immigration dynamics; unexpected shocks and surges were common. Using local projections and several sources of identifying variation, we then estimate the relationship between immigration and growth in GDP per capita, labor productivity, capital investment, and total factor productivity (TFP). Immigration from non-OECD countries was a significant predictor of GDP per worker growth, primarily through higher investment. High-skilled immigration, in particular, was associated with stronger human capital accumulation, faster TFP growth, and greater capital deepening. Native population growth, by contrast, had no or weakly negative effects on GDP per capita and productivity. These results are consistent with a large literature documenting the positive productivity and growth effects of immigration, especially high-skilled immigration. [emphasis added]

None of that is novel or surprising to people who actually take some time to understand that issue. Every country has its own particular challenges with immigration, of course. But do European countries want to continue to have growing GDPs? (Assuming that there is no immediate breakthrough to establishing no-growth abundance economies.)

Albert writes:

[Peri] is well aware, however, that his research – even with supporting evidence – struggles to compete with populist rhetoric: "The problem is that people like me have not managed to find a slogan as effective as 'immigrants take your jobs,'" he noted. "It is false, no data shows it, but it works."

Democratic parties in Europe need to get much more serious about pushing back on that narrative. They should certainly not be encouraging xenophobic politics!

Notes:

(1) Le Monde Editorial (2026): The far right's immigration trap closes in on Europe. Le Monde English 08/27/2026. <https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2026/08/27/the-far-right-s-immigration-trap-closes-in-on-europe_6756902_23.html> (Accessed: 2026-27-08).

(2) Hernández, Aitor (2026): Sánchez takes rare swipe at Spain’s king over Ceuta crisis. Politico EU 08/31/2026. <https://www.politico.eu/article/pedro-sanchez-takes-rare-swipe-at-spains-king-felipe-vi-over-ceuta-crisis/> (Accessed: 2026-01-09).

(3) Jones, Sam (2026): Morocco not to blame for Ceuta border breach, says Spanish PM. Guardian 08/31/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/31/morocco-ceuta-border-breach-spanish-pm-migration-pedro-sanchez> (Accessed: 2026-01-09).

(4) Conesa, Elsa et al (2026): How Russia is trying to influence Europe's upcoming elections. Le Monde English 08/27/2026. <https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/08/27/how-russia-is-trying-to-influence-europe-s-upcoming-elections_6756901_4.html> (Accessed: 2026-27-08).

(5) Albert, Eric (2026): 'Immigration is beneficial for the economy as a whole. Why is it so unpopular?' Le Monde English 07/14/2026. <https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2026/07/14/immigration-is-beneficial-for-the-economy-as-a-whole-why-is-it-so-unpopular_6755467_23.html> (Accessed: 2026-27-08).

Peri, Giovanni (2026): Shaping Europe’s future: innovation, growth and stability. European Central Bank website. <https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/sintra/ecb.forumcentbankpub2026_Peri_paper.en.pdf> (Accessed: 2026-27-08).

Narrative and messaging, 90 years ago and now

Political polling continues to advance and to produce finer and finer details about political preferences, propensity to vote, and demographic details that political strategists and campaign consultants churn into campaign strategies and advertising themes.

More is better, up to a point. But already in the 1990s, Jerry Brown – four-time California Governor, California Attorney General, Mayor of Oakland and three-time Democratic Presidential candidate – was warning that the ability to define multiple segments of voters and to target advertising to those various groups carried a new risk. A candidate can put together a majority of votes to get elected but without having a majority consensus among those cobbled-together segments to form an effective governing coalition.

For anyone in the mood to nerd out over this topic, the Boston Review earlier this year offered various informed ideas on the topic under the rubric, "How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism." (1) Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach introduce it by reminding us that while centrist Moderation “remains the conventional political wisdom” among consultants and many pundits, in the current situation it “is more conventional than wise, and the most prominent cases for it badly misunderstand how politics works.”

Of course, not all the voters who coalesce around a candidate will share the same opinion on every issue. This increases the importance of establishing a broader narrative to define candidates, campaigns and parties. A classic example of such a narrative was a central part of Franklin Roosevelt’s acceptance speech at the 1936 Democratic convention, known as the Rendezvous With Destiny speech.

Political tyranny was wiped out at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.

Since that struggle, however, man's inventive genius released new forces in our land which reordered the lives of our people. ...

For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital - all undreamed of by the Fathers - the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service. ...

The savings of the average family, the capital of the small business man, the investments set aside for old age - other people's money - these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in.

For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor - other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness. (3) [emphasis added]

In a later speech that year at Madison Square Garden, he said:

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred. (3)

Now that is a narrative!! And FDR and the Democrats had 3 ½ years of fighting for New Deal relief and economic-stimulus programs behind them at the time so they could point to things they had delivered.

Political narratives and messaging 90 years later (i.e., now)

Of course, times change. But we still have economic royalists. And today’s January Sixers, masked ICE goons, and “patriot militias” are far better financed that their predecessors in Liberty League and the Ku Klux Klan (and the German-American Bund!) of the 1930s.

But we have seen some excellent examples of successful political narratives. For large-D Democrats and for all supporters of democracy it’s of course an negative example, but Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” has been a durable narrative theme for his supporters to rally around. Of course, narratives have to be spread by messaging. And the Trumpist messaging around the MAGA theme involved immigrants as invaders, MS-13 gang sadists, drug cartels, white-supremacist fantasies about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats, litter boxes for school children who identify as cats, and so on. The specific messaging may be and often is despicable and/or insane. But it’s a narrative that Trump and his supporters sound like they are willing to fight for it.

The Democrats can also have narratives bolstered by specific messages. The scale of corruption in the Trump Administration is off the scale of anything we’ve seen in American history. The iconic Teapot Dome during Warren Harding’s Republican Administration scandal in today’s dollars looks like a normal week in Trumpland today.

Stopping corruption is a useful narrative because even Republican voters at least claim to be concerned about it. But it also has to be messaged with specifics. And there is (to put it ironically) an embarrassment of riches for the Democrats to use: The Trump family’s crypto business. Jared Kushner’s business dealings with foreign governments as he allegedly does diplomacy on the side. Trump’s “Board of Peace.” The shady slush fund Venezuela set up to be controlled by the White House after Trump’s military intervention. Republican Supreme Court Justices taking valuable gifts from private donors. The end-of-the-week announcements about trouble in the Iran War followed up by Monday morning good news on which some investors always seem to profit when the stock market opens. Selling pardons to some awful people.

These aren’t obscure issues. They are in the news constantly. And most people think those kinds of things are sleazy conduct and theft of public money. Or “taxpayer money” as it is so often called (although the money belongs to the public’s government, not to the original individual payer of the taxes).

This probably isn’t what most commentators and campaign consultants mean when they talk about “kitchen-table” issues. Still: Narrative: Trump and his cronies are as corrupt as any government we’ve ever had! Messaging: Trump and his family made X million dollars last week on their crooked crypto business!! And so on. Delivered in a tone of We Democrats are going to stop this! (Erasing the word “bipartisan” from the campaign vocabulary is also something Democrats should seriously consider!)

And media is different than it was 90 years ago. Fireside chats over the radio and speaking in booming cadences so that everyone in a large hall can hear without the benefit of loudspeakers don’t resonate so well today. Now we live in a time where a Democratic Senate candidate in Georgia saying the words “and travel with Natalie” can send the entire national GOP into a hissy-fit of fake outrage!

In the era of AI and podcasts, messaging for one’s own side in the context of a broader narrative requires different presentations and more snark than was common in the 1930s. And maybe even a little international solidarity, like this new one from the British Marsh Family to a familiar ABBA tune. (4)

This post was first published at the ProDA-Progressive Caucus of Democrats Abroad Substack.

Notes:

(1) How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism. Boston Review 02/03/2026. <https://www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-not-to-defeat-authoritarianism/> (Accessed 2026-31-08).

(2) Roosevelt, Franklin (1936): Acceptance Speech for the Renomination for the Presidency, Philadelphia, Pa. The American Presidency Project. <https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/acceptance-speech-for-the-renomination-for-the-presidency-philadelphia-pa> (Accessed 2026-31-08).

(3) Roosevelt, Franklin (1936): Acceptance Speech for the Renomination for the Presidency, Philadelphia, Pa. The American Presidency Project. <https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-madison-square-garden-new-york-city-1> (Accessed 2026-31-08).

(4) "Thank You for the Bullsh!t" - Marsh Family parody of ABBA (on Karoline Leavitt leaving White House). Marsh Family YouTube channel 08/26/2026. <https://youtu.be/o9l1xArp2RM?si=6hle2sL8M9EMcvuj> (Accessed 2026-31-08).

Newsweek Global’s fantasy of Venezuela

The cover of Newsweek Global for Aug. 07-14 kisses up to the Trump regime with a graphic based on a famous image of late 19th-century European imperialism (also on the American edition cover):

This is the 1882 model featuring Britain’s Cecil Rhodes:

Before going deeper into the Newsweek article, there has also been a recent announcement about Venezuelan concessions to the US on oil reserves, which Ben Meiselas of Meidas Touch describes as “a Trump oil company in the Defense Department.” (1)

(1)

As we might expect from the Newsweek cover, the article bylined to Jesus Mesa and Leonardo Feldman gives us deep, uh, analysis (propaganda?) like this:

Oswaldo Ramirez [Colina], managing director and senior political consultant at ORC Consultores, has been tracking Venezuelan public opinion for years. He said the numbers in polling conducted before the earthquake told a story the street already knew. “In December, hope was at 51 percent,” he said, speaking to Newsweek from Caracas. “In February it jumped to 81. Now it is at 65, still 15 points above the average it had throughout 2025.” (2)

Miami-based ORC Consultores provides this description of itself on its LinkedIn page:

ORC Consultores was born in 2009, as a firm specializing in Environmental Analysis and Intelligence, Strategic Advice in Public Affairs and Political Communication, with experience in advising public and private organizations, as well as leaders from various sectors, who are interested in understanding the behavior of the socio-political variables with the greatest impact and the dynamics of the public sector today, in order to draw up strategic plans that allow them to conduct their organizations through the constant changes that the country is experiencing. (3)

Take what you will from that description. But it certainly doesn’t seem to be some kind of independent academic think tank! It sounds more like propagandists for hire.

But it’s worth looking a bit more closely at the figures quoted above this dodgy-sounding consulting group has provided, according to Newsweek, quoting Ramirez: “In December, hope was at 51 percent.”

That would be December 2025, the month before the American-backed coup and the kidnapping – excuse me, arrest – of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. The Trump regime had already been carrying assassination strikes on what, so far as we know even now, were Venezuelan fishing boats. The possibility of a US invasion was very much in people’s minds.

As Katie Angell notes:

The strikes [on Venezuelan fishing boats] coincided with broader U.S. military moves in the region, including large naval deployments in the southern Caribbean, as well as U.S. Pres. Donald Trump’s subsequent threats of potential land strikes and his declaration on November 29, 2025, that the airspace above and around Venezuela should be considered closed. In early December U.S. forces also seized a Venezuelan-linked oil tanker off the country’s coast, an operation that further inflamed tensions and drew sharp condemnation from Caracas. After the tanker’s seizure, the situation intensified when on December 16, Trump ordered a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers entering or departing Venezuela, a move intended to halt the country’s oil trade and deal a substantial blow to Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy. [emphasis added] (4)

In October 2025, Trump had specifically threated to stop alleged Venezuelan drug smuggling by direct intervention inside the country. “We are certainly looking at land now because we’ve got the sea under control.” (5)

With very concrete threats of war and military actions already taking place, Venezuelan public opinion was 51% hopeful, according to ORC Consultores. “In February [hope] jumped to 81. Now it is at 65, still 15 points above the average it had throughout 2025.” (Newsweek)

The same regime was still in power in February that was there on January 3, the date of the US kidnapping operation on Maduro. It was now headed by Delcy Rodriguez, who had been Maduro’s Vice President. There has been no restructuring of the regime or concrete moves to a new government with clean elections. Rodriguez’ government has made a sweetheart deal with the Trump regime that included major concessions on Venezuelan oil similar to what Maduro’s government had offered.

And the hopeful attitude toward the situation jumped to 81% and is now 65%, according to ORC Consultores.

This might lead one to think that a boost in the hopeful attitude means that Venezuelans are not nearly so worried about massive US air attacks and ground intervention as they were in January when the Trump regime was threatening an invasion, even though the regime is essentially the same. The same Newsweek article reports, “Opposition leader Machado commands 74 percent trust among the general population, according to one poll, more than five times Venezuelans’ trust in Interim President [María Corina] Rodríguez.”

Someone please tell me again, why was Venezuela under Maduro such a massive danger to the United States? Oh, yeah, they were providing oil and economic assistance to Cuba, whose massive army could launch a blitzkrieg on Florida at any moment!

But at least Newsweek’s article that kisses up to the Trumpist framing does let some important observations slip through:

Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves, a resource base that decades of forced underinvestment have left almost entirely untapped. Production, which peaked in the late 1990s at 3.5 million barrels a day, has climbed from roughly 800,000 barrels a day in January to 1.1 million by June. Investors see their opportunity in restoring that past production. [emphasis added]

For US foreign policy, especially the kind depicted on the Newsweek cover, the fact that “holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves” remains the Alpha and Omega, especially for the kind of thinking depicted on the Newsweek cover.

The reason that production has experienced “decades of forced underinvestment” is largely due to US sanctions. The fact that corporations, including oil giants, focus heavily on immediate profits also exists simultaneously with the fact that both the oil barons and the US governments that have been eager to serve them also do have a political long game in play. Despite the fact that fossil fuels are heating the atmosphere, burning up and draying out more and more of the planet all the time, they are still focused also on the usual foreign policy games to control oil. Without the sanctions on Venezuela for decades – sanctions that were based on ideological grounds rather than on actual national security issues for the US – US oil giants could have been making profitable deals for years by normalizing relations with the country.

But according to Newsweek, everything is hunky-dory now!

Given the kiss-up-to-Trump tone of this Newsweek cover story, I’m surprised they didn’t work in an anecdote about oil executives handing out chocolate candy to little kids in Caracas. The GIs-giving-candy-to-children in Europe was a favorite trope of the Second World War and the postwar occupation. Here is an example from 1944 (although: the grim-looking soldier holding a rifle makes it look a bit like a hostage photo): (6)

But if the reader makes it all the way to end, we do get something that resembles actual journalism:

Ronal Rodríguez, a researcher and spokesperson for the Venezuela Observatory at Universidad del Rosario in Bogota, one of the leading academic centers tracking Venezuelan affairs in the region, offered perhaps the most precise summary of where things stand. “Everything has changed,” he said, “and nothing has changed.”

What has changed, he argued, is who controls access to Venezuela’s wealth. What has not changed is the structure underneath. “Many believed that Nicolás Maduro’s departure would trigger a democratic transition,” Ronal Rodríguez said. “So far, however, what has emerged is an economic opening, not a transition to democracy.” [emphasis added]

Some things haven’t changed a lot since the days of overthrowing the democratic government of Guatemala in 1954 for the convenience of the United Fruit Company.

It might be worth recalling that during that successful regime-change operation by the United States, a young Argentine doctor named Ernesto Guevara – later better known as Che - was visiting in Guatemala. That experience made a big mark on his thinking. What Chalmers Johnson called “blowback” (7) is a real thing.

Notes:

(1) Trump Faces a Brutal Reality … Meidas Touch YouTube channel 08/31/2026. <https://youtu.be/s1Evy7wFJmw?si=xY3m_3MTWtcDi7ae&t=1005> (Accessed: 2026-31-08).

(2) Mesa, Jesus & Feldman, Leonardo (2026): A Wager That Worked. Newsweek Global 08/07/-14/2026, 22-31.

(3) ORC Consultores-About. LinkedIn n/d. <https://www.linkedin.com/company/orc-consultores/about/> (Accessed: 2026-08-15). My translation to English.

(4) Angell, Katie. "What Is Happening Between the United States and Venezuela?". Encyclopedia Britannica 02/, 13 Feb. 2026. <https://www.britannica.com/topic/What-Is-Happening-Between-the-United-States-and-Venezuela> (Accessed 15 August 2026).

(5) Bennett, Brian & Popli, Nik (2025): After Targeting Boats at Sea, Trump Suggests Land Strikes in Venezuela May Be Next. Time 10/15/2025. <https://time.com/7326027/trump-venezuela-land-strikes/> (Accessed: 2026-08-15).

(6) Historical Photos: Facebook 11/28/2025. <https://www.facebook.com/groups/oldhistoricalphotos/posts/827102213482813/> (Accessed: 2026-01-09).

(7) Johnson, Sheila (2011): The blowback world of Chalmers Johnson. Le Monde diplomatique 04/13/2011. (Accessed: 2026-08-15).

Democrats really need to rein in their hippie-punching tendencies

At the risk of slipping into the “don't-think-of-an-elephant” trap in mind, falsely accusing Democratic politicians of promoting “Jihad” is tacky at the very best.

Ryan Cooper takes a look at a current case of this:

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) … joined Fox News and accused [H]asan Piker [the Republicans’ “Willie Horton” of 2026] of putting out “an open call for violence against Jewish Americans … this is right out of the Nazi playbook.” Gottheimer added that [Democratic Michigan nominee for the Senate Abdul] El-Sayed’s clarification that Piker does not speak for him is “pathetic.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries made a similar implication. “There is zero justification for threats against the safety of our Jewish brothers and sisters at a moment of rising hate,” he posted. (1)

There really do seem to be senior Democrats who would prefer to lose with a “moderate” candidate than win with a progressive one.

For a prominent Democratic Congressman to accuse the Republicans’ favorite fake target of the moment of making “an open call for violence against Jewish Americans … this is right out of the Nazi playbook,” sounds pretty tacky to me. And downright dishonest unless somebody literally makes “an open call for violence.” Especially at a moment when the Trump has literally declared the whole concept of “antifa,” aka, anti-fascist, to be a domestic terrorist organization.

Yes, politics is politics. But some of these so-called moderates need to rein in the Chicken Little rhetoric.

At least Gottheimer had the decency to vote against a Republican measure to criticize “socialism” and to support Trump’s and the Republicans’ SAVE America Act that is actually an authorization for voter-suppression

For anyone interested in hearing directly from the Republicans’ current “Willie Horton” bogeyman, here’s one where he talks about “defamation” (3):

Notes:

(1) Cooper, Ryan (2026): Are Centrist Democrats Too Racist to Compete in Michigan? The America Prospect <https://prospect.org/2026/09/02/are-centrist-democrats-too-racist-to-compete-in-michigan/> (Accessed: 2026-09-03).

(2) Rogerson, Riley (2026): Handful of House Democrats split on GOP resolution condemning socialism. Politico 09/01/2026. <https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/09/01/congress/dems-defect-on-socialism-01061046> (Accessed: 2026-09-03).

(3) It's Intense Defamation': Hasan Piker Considers Suing His Democratic Critics. Semafor YouTube channel 08/28/2026. <https://youtu.be/ysMKki0V3SM?si=B1S3Sb91wGipUbW5> (Accessed: 2026-09-03).

Branko Milanovic on warmongering in Europe

Branko Milanovic recently commented on the evolution of US and European perspectives during the course of the Russia-Ukraine War that began in 2022 and has now gone on longer than the First World War. (1)

It is the case, of course, that Russian seized Crimea in 2014 and a low-level irregular war between Russia and Ukraine continued in eastern Ukraine until now. But when we hear about the “Russia-Ukraine War,” that is generally understood to mean the ongoing war since Russia’s large-scale invasion of 2022.

Milanovic notes that the strongest reaction to the 2022 invasion came from the United States under President Joe Biden. “Europe’s reaction was several octavos lower as it generally was during the Cold War. Finally, the rest of the world, while mostly condemning Russia for an obvious violation of the international law and UN rules, was not overly concerned.” He reminds us that Biden initially insisted that Ukraine refrain from strikes on Russian territory. “But even under Biden that policy was gradually abandoned and the US de facto entered the war through its selection and direct targeting of places in Russia.”

A critical part of the story is the bull-headed decision by the Cheney-Bush Administration to insist on a NATO declaration in 2008 that both Ukraine and Georgia, both former Soviet Republics, would become members of NATO at some unspecified time in the future. John Mearsheimer, the leading advocate of “offensive realist” approach to understanding great-power foreign policies, wrote a piece in the ultra-respectable Foreign Affairs magazine in 2014 “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault,” that has provoked much gnashing of teeth and rending of clothing among foreign policy bigwigs and media figures ever since.

But you would have to listen very carefully these days to find anyone who would say that NATO’s 2008 declaration was a clever foreign policy move. Neither Ukraine nor Georgia in 2008 were anywhere close to meeting the minimum requirements for NATO membership. And still are not. Russia had never liked the idea of NATO expansion. But they hadn’t raised big objections, even when the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania became members. But they had made it clear that Ukrainian membership in NATO was something they considered a serious threat to their national interest. And had made that clear, publicly and explicitly.

Even people who think that perception on their part was wrong, or overblown, or whatever, should also be able to recognize that declaring explicitly that Georgia and Ukraine would become NATO members – even though they weren’t ready and NATO was not ready in 2008 to go directly to war against Russia over either country – was a dumb move.

The Russians didn’t seize Crimea and begin the active guerilla war in western Ukraine until 2014, just after the pro-Russian regime of President Viktor Yanukovych fell and was replaced by the pro-Western Petro Poroschenko. Both Russia and the US were playing active roles in supporting their preferred side in the Ukrainian internal political struggle. For all the usual highfalutin talk about democracy and national sovereignty from the US, what played out was very much hardnosed practical geopolitics. How right or wrong each side was is another question.

The European Union was pushing Yanukovych’s government to accelerate Ukraine’s accession to the EU. As Ursula Koch-Laugwitz explained at the time:

Yanukovych feared that his re-election could be endangered through the "adjustment costs" and structural reforms that would be generated by a closer association to the EU. Instead of asking for support for the integration, Brussels threatened to deny Ukraine the association if three EU conditions were not met: the release of [imprisoned former President] Yulia Tymoshenko [of the Fatherland party], an election law reform and an end to selective justice. At the same time, Russia, which most prefers to integrate Ukraine into Putin's pet project of a Eurasian Union, put the country under massive economic pressure and tempted the Ukrainian government in the short term with comprehensive financial assistance - successfully. But Yanukovych's decision to put the agreement with the European Union on ice placed his grip on power even more in question. (2)

Also in 2014, Paul Pillar commented on the considerations that the Obama Administration and Secretary of State John Kerry were applying to regime changes of the time in Egypt and Ukraine:

There are many criteria by which we in the West can assess what is good and what is bad about the events in these countries and any others in which similar political change occurs. What happens to democracy is only one of those criteria.

There are the various issues of human rights and governmental integrity, and in this respect an end to the more thuggish and corrupt aspects of Yanukovych’s presidency may be a good thing. (Zbigniew Brzezinski describes Yanukovych as “a mendacious schemer, a coward and a thief.”) And for realist observers, the foreign policy orientation of a government may be at least as important as any of the internal considerations.

Each individual case is worthy of assessment in its own right. The two cases mentioned here are quite different in important respects. Some of the cheering over Morsi’s ouster reflected an ignoble Islamophobia that is not a factor in Ukraine. The alternatives to the ousted leadership are also quite different; in Egypt it is a restored authoritarian military regime, while in Ukraine we can still hope it will be something not just different but more to the benefit of the Ukrainian people. [emphasis added] (3)

Now, 12 years later, we’re in the fifth year of war in Ukraine, in which there has been an essentially stalemated war of attrition on the ground since 2023, and which will leave Ukraine badly damaged with no reasonable prospects of becoming a NATO member, even if NATO survive the Trump policies in something like its current form.

As Milanovic writes:

Over the past two years, the situation has further evolved. The US has continued with a policy where it is a de facto participant in the war but has also shown a desire to wrap-up the conflict in one form or another. What was surprising is that the thirst for war has become almost insatiable in several European countries, principally in the Nordic and Baltic countries, but more recently also in Germany, and, for long-term historical reasons that go to the 18th century, in the UK too. [my emphasis]

We hear from other commentators, too, that warmongering attitudes toward Russia are prevalent in European NATO countries. To paraphrase a famous Gospel verse, warmongers we will have with us always. But I’m not convinced that specifically an aggressive policy toward Russia is something driving most European policymakers. It’s fairly obvious that European policymakers see some relative advantage in having Russia tied down in the war with Ukraine. That’s just how national security analysts look at things.

But Russia and Europe for the foreseeable future will look at each other as potential adversaries. And in a serious military confrontation, the European allies can no longer count on the United States to be a reliable partner in deterrence or in actual combat. In order to have a credible deterrence, the process that has already begun of Europe developing new arrangements for joint defense independent of the US will have to continue for the next several years. Whether or not the Russia-Ukraine War continues for years more, the idea of the EU countries actually promoting war against Russia is unlikely in the extreme. Unless maybe Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Poland all come under the leadership of crackpots and mobsters of the Donald Trump type.

There are certainly plenty of risks of which we all need to be aware! But Milanovic overstates the present situation when he writes, “The Nordic-Baltic coalition is essentially calling for a war with Russia, citing its own fears and traumas of Russian/Soviet control and occupation.”

But he has a valid point on a Korea-style protracted armistice for Ukraine:

The Nordic-Baltic alliance also forgets that if the cease-fire is established along the current lines of control, the [Ukrainian] territory of the Donbass etc. will indeed be controlled by Russia but no single country in the world would officially recognize it. Did they not notice that no country from the [Russia-aligned] Commonwealth of Independent States has recognized it? Did they not notice that not even Belarus recognizes it? Such, indeed fragile, peace not only puts an end to today’s carnage, but leaves open a possibility of eventual long-term solution between Russia and Ukraine. Neither Putin, nor Zelensky, nor the social forces that support them are eternal. Things will change in Russia, and in Ukraine. Negotiations can take place in ten or twenty years—but at least people would be alive rather than dead. [emphasis added]

What we are seeing right now are things like the following. Germany is responding to the recent appearance of what they claim to have been Russian drones sent with explosives to the Leipzig airport. Although there were no actual explosions involved. Although German Defense Minister Alexander Dobrindt describes the incident as being directed by a “foreign power.” Germany is publicly suggesting it may call for a NATO “Article 4” consultation.

Article 4 of the NATO Treaty foresees consultations, if according to one of the allies the integrity of their territory, the political independence or the security of one of the parties is threatened. In distinction to Article 5 [which authorizes joint action in defense of a member state under military attack], it doesn’t involve the triggering of the military defense obligations of the alliance. The outcome of such [Article 4] consultations is open. (4)

This is the European world of 2026: threats and counterthreats, provocations and responses, all in the world in which the NATO commitments of the US can no longer be trusted as they once were. It’s normal that the states of what Milanovic calls “the Nordic-Baltic alliance” would take the more role of making the most dire and urgent warnings. Because they would be the most likely targets of any military invasion by Russia. While a country like Germany, which has had both extremely hostile and relatively friendly relationships with Russia since 1918 or so, is better positioned to play the role of serious but cautious authority.

Here’s a very brief summary of what Articles 4 and 5 are. (5)



Notes:

(1) Milanovic, Branko (2026): On European hypocrisy and warmongering. Global Inequality and More 3.0 08/26/2026. <https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/on-european-hypocrisy-and-warmongering> (Accessed : 2026-29-08).

(2) Koch-Laugwitz, Ursula (2014): Ukraine: Protest ohne Projekt. Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 3/2014. <https://www.blaetter.de/ausgabe/2014/maerz/ukraine-protest-ohne-projekt> (Accessed 2014-07-02). My translation to English.

(3) Pillar, Paul (2014): A Selective View of ‘Democracy’. Consortium News 02/26/2014. <https://consortiumnews.com/2014/02/26/a-selective-view-of-democracy/> (Accessed 20236-30-08).

(4) Balser, Markus & Brössler, Daniel (2026): Suche nach Antworten an den Kreml. Süddeutsche Zeitung für Österreich 29-30-Aug-2026.

(5) What are NATO's Article 4 and Article 5 - AP explains. AP Archive YouTube channel 09/28/2025. <https://youtu.be/Y8j0mAF9qV8?si=YxCryta202Q-EZkw> (Accessed: 2026-30-08).

Dim hopes for approaching Israeli elections

With Israeli parliamentary elections coming up on October 27, it’s important to keep in mind that Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies toward the Palestinians are, unfortunately, very popular among his target constituencies: “Jewish Israelis are united in their support for perennial war, which effectively means charting an increasingly solitary regional and global path,” writes Ori Goldberg. (1)

And, as presumably most Israeli voters know, Israel is not observing the Gaza cease-fire it agreed to. More jaded observers talk about the concept of “a ceasefire with Israeli characteristics” - i.e.: you cease, we fire. The phrase is a play on the Chinese Communists’ concept of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

As Britain’s Channel 4 reports: (2)

Barry Malone recently reported for Middle East Eye:

How many people do you need to kill before you’ve violated a ceasefire? One, surely. But what about two? 10? 100? Or how about more than 1,200? That’s how many Palestinians Israel has killed in Gaza since agreeing to an ostensible ceasefire with Hamas in October.

Israel has also continued to pummel southern Lebanon, despite a “ceasefire” there. But the western media appears to see no violations at all. Instead, it sees ceasefires that are “fragile”, “tested”, “strained” or “shaky”.

Given that news reporting is supposed to rely on precision and accuracy, you’d imagine organisations such as the BBC, Reuters, the Associated Press and CNN have read the terms of the deal that was signed between Israel and Hamas in Egypt. It’s unequivocal, and there really isn’t much room for interpretation. There were conditions that needed to be fulfilled within the first 72 hours before the truce could take effect, including the withdrawal of Israeli forces to agreed lines within Gaza, and the return by Hamas of all remaining Israeli hostages, living or dead.

Once the prerequisites were met, which they were, the text said that “all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment and targeting operations will be suspended”. [emphasis added, paragraph breaks adjusted] (3)

Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal has been to have weak and/or failed states in his geographic neighborhood. And now the war which Trump initiated jointly with Netanyahu against Iran is doing an awful lot of damage to countries in the neighborhood.

But the Netanyahu government doesn’t seem to be able to follow any policy other than a more-or-less chronic state of aggressive conflicts and disputes with nearby countries.

David Shulman in a sobering essay this past March lists four elements of what he describes as “the underpinnings for much of Israeli society and politics.”

1. The Land of Israel, from the Jordan River to the sea, belongs to the Jews and only to the Jews.
The state is a metaphysical entity worth dying for, if necessary, rather than a pragmatic framework meant to make life livable for its citizens.
2. What was initially an explicit drive to create a Jewish majority in Palestine - a goal realized in the course of the 1948 war and the Palestinian Nakba - has morphed into an obsession with ensuring Jewish supremacy throughout the land, and specifically in the occupied territories. To that end, Israel needs a harsh apartheid system in the West Bank
3. What was initially an explicit drive to create a Jewish majority in Palestine - a goal realized in the course of the 1948 war and the Palestinian Nakba - has morphed into an obsession with ensuring Jewish supremacy throughout the land, and specifically in the occupied territories. To that end, Israel needs a harsh apartheid system in the West Bank
4. An Israeli proverb: “If force doesn’t work, use more force.” Not even Thomas Hobbes entertained such a primitive notion of what constitutes power. International legitimacy no longer counts. (4)

The situation in Gaza can scarcely be described as a peaceful one, with Israel actively supporting violent militias opposing Hamas. This is an old story. Israel encouraged Hamas to act as an Islamist opposition to weaken the much more secular Palestinian Authority:

Israel, Jordan, and a few other Arab states were concerned about the growing strength of the PLO’s secular nationalist ideology and thus initially supported Hamas’s creation. Like other local Sunni Islamic political parties and movements ... Hamas was grounded in the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. (5)

Owen Jones brings us this grim report on Israel-Türkiye relations. (6)

Netanyahu’s regime in now claiming that NATO ally Türkiye is its new “Iran.” Although Iran itself is actually winning the war which Netanyahu encouraged Trump to undertake. As Jones points out, Israel attacking Türkiye would potentially be an “Article 5” event requiring its NATO allies to come to its defense: i.e., defense against Israel.

Meanwhile, Trump has been threatening to militarily attack Oman. Oman was the first country in what we now call the Middle East with which the US established a diplomatic partnership. As the US Embassy to Oman says on its webpage:

The two countries formalized their relationship when they signed the “Treaty of Amity and Commerce” in 1833 - the first bilateral accord between the U.S. and an Arab Gulf state. In 1840, the Sultan’s envoy Ahmad bin Na’aman sailed to New York on the Sultanah, and bin Na’aman became the first Arab diplomat accredited to the U.S. The Sultanah was also the first Arab ship to sail to the United States. (7)

That was during the first Jackson Administration. Which brings me to one of my persistent pet peeves, which is that commentators who should know better push the narrative that Steve Bannon established during Trump 1.0 that Trump is somehow an admirer of Andrew Jackson. For all of Old Hickory’s real faults, he was the sworn enemy of John C. Calhoun, who still reigns as the Evil Spirit of American History. Trump is the modern-day John Calhoun.

Oman and the US had decent relations since the Age of Jackson. Until 2026, when the Orange Anomaly started threatening to bomb them if they don’t kiss his behind.

Notes:

(1) Goldberg, Ori (2026): As Iran and the U.S. talk, Israel chooses eternal war. +972 Magazine 07/03/20226. <https://www.972mag.com/us-iran-talks-israel-eternal-war/> (Accessed: 2026-07-08).

(2) Netanyahu rejects Trump’s Gaza peace plan and refuses to withdraw troops. Channel 4 News YouTube channel 08/10/2026. <https://youtu.be/qRIVIjto_qM?si=imH9zScPdNjz46B-> (Accessed: 2026-15-08).

(3) Malone, Barry (2026): Israel is not 'testing' its ceasefires. It's violating them. Middle East Eye 08/04/2026. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-not-testing-its-ceasefires-its-violating-them> (Accessed: 2026-07-08).

(4) Shulman, David (2026): Evil in the West Bank. New York Review of Books 03/12/2026, 11.

(5) Michaeli, Yarden et al (2026): 'Israel Is Sending Armed Militias in Gaza to Commit War Crimes – and I Have to Protect Them'. Haaretz 08/27/2026. Gift link: <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2026-08-27/ty-article-magazine/gaza-israel-sending-militias-commit-war-crimes-i-have-to-protect-them/0000019f-f0f0-df61-a3ff-f9fe6ca70000?gift=041a126ee36b4f4ebe8b3385c37af512> (Accessed: 2026-28-08).

(6) Israel At War With Turkey - Is It Coming? Owen Jones YouTube channel 08/17/2026. <https://youtu.be/bY0eEhYOH3s?si=5FsleU4MeiEDiYo5> (Accessed: 2026-28-08).

(7) History of the U.S.-Oman Relationship. U.S. Embassy Oman website, n/d. <https://om.usembassy.gov/history-of-the-u-s-oman-relationship/> (Accessed: 2026-28-08).

How to parse the Trumpists’ retro-1950s rhetoric

The Republican Party’s turn to blatant, 1950s style Anti-Communism is a real flashback to the days when Donald Trump’s future mentor Roy Cohn was the chief council for Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunting Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

It’s worth recalling how a onetime Hollywood union leader, Ronald Reagan, happily embraced redbaiting political rhetoric himself and used it to oppose what he considered a dangerous socialist program. That is, Medicare, which was enacted in 1965.

As Jon Schwarz recalls in a 2015 article for The Intercept on the 50th anniversary of the very successful Medicare program (1), Reagan made a recording in 1961 on a leading communication technology of the time - a vinyl record album - in which he warned about the danger of impending tyranny represented by the dastardly Medicare idea. Schwarz characterized it as “completely nuts.” Thanks to more recent technological advances in media that produced YouTube, we can conveniently judge it ourselves.

On the vinyl record, Reagan said:

[The Truman Administration] proposed that we have a compulsory health insurance program for all people in the United States and, of course, the American people unhesitatingly rejected this. So with the American people on record as not wanting socialized medicine, [Democratic supporters promoted] the idea that all people of Social Security age should be brought under a program of compulsory health insurance.

Reagan explained why this whole idea was a devious Socialist plan:

[O]ne of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can't afford it now.

Medicare became law in the US over 60 years ago along with Medicaid. It’s safe to say it is still very popular. As is the idea of Medicare for All.

The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) published this graphic in 1946 in support of Truman’s national health insurance plan:

Yes, Harry Truman was proposing what we now call Medicare for All!

The Democrats today could bait the Republicans by finding some crank GOP Member of Congress who once said something about how if we don’t get rid of Medicare, the US will be a socialist dictatorship in five years’ time. Throw in Rand Paul’s 2025 proposal on his X account to raise the full Social Security retirement age to 70. And make that a major talking point against the Republicans from now through 2028.

Making a major theme of the idea that Republicans want to flush Medicare down the toilet is something that would catch the attention of most every voter who doesn’t live in a basement spending every day reading decades-old John Birch Society pamphlets!

This post originally appeared on the ProDA-Progressive Caucus of Democrats Abroad Substack.

Notes:

(1) Schwarz, Jon (2015): Medicare Celebrates Its 50th Birthday, Despite Ronald Reagan. The Intercept 07/30/2015. <https://theintercept.com/2015/07/30/medicares-50th-birthday-lets-forget-ronald-reagans-insane-diatribe-trying-stop/> (Accessed: 2026-27-08).

(2) Ronald Reagan speaks out on Socialized Medicine – Audio. Reagan Presidential Foundation YouTube channel 07/23/2009. <https://youtu.be/AYrlDlrLDSQ?si=ZKnMdD7FTLI0MuFQ> (Accessed: 2026-23-08).

(3) For the People’s Health. Economic Outlook (CIO) April 1946. <http://recordsofrights.org/assets/record/000/000/579/579_original.jpg> (Accessed: 2026-23-08).