More on military Keynesianism in Russia

Following up on my recent post on military Keynesianism in Russia during the current war with Ukraine, there is an analysis from Seva Gunitsky and Jeremy Morris on that same topic:

The Kremlin has made the war the central organizing principle of social and economic life, and the Russian state has been transformed by the war in turn. The country’s shadow economy, labor markets, regional budgets, social hierarchies, and political incentives have all been reordered around the conflict. In the process, the war has produced a self-sustaining institutional and economic order that constrains even Putin. Russia’s fiscal and industrial base has become structurally dependent on military spending, so much so that entire regions and sectors cannot survive without it. Combat pay and expanded defense wages have given millions of Russians in depressed regions their first real income gains in years. [my emphasis] (1)

That particular construction seems to be hinting that Russia’s survival depends on sustaining the current level of military spending. The article by Michael Krätke that I cited in the previous post implied that the current level of military spending is damaging the Russian economy because it is diverting so many resources from the civilian economy.

Gunitsky and Morris emphasize a very different claim:

Russia’s fiscal and industrial base has become structurally dependent on military spending, so much so that entire regions and sectors cannot survive without it. Combat pay and expanded defense wages have given millions of Russians in depressed regions their first real income gains in years. [my emphasis]

A big emphasis of the neoconservative anti-Russia fixation has been on the idea that keeping Russia in a long war would severely damage Russia and help unseat the Putin government. This argument builds on the background of the common but very flawed assumption that the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan caused the collapse of the USSR, or at least contributed mightily too it: an assumption that relies considerably on imagination.

They elaborate on the argument this way:

Contrary to popular belief, most Russians have not benefited from the invasion. It is true that as the defense budget tripled over the first two years of conflict, the Russian economy grew and wages rose. But what looks like wartime prosperity is what the geographer Natalia Zubarevich calls the “law of small numbers”: percentage gains that seem impressive only because the starting point is so low.

The argument seems to be that the Russian economy has become incredibly dependent on high military spending that raised wages and stimulated the economy – but this apparently benefitted approximately nobody except Russian plutocrats. 

They also make a head-scratcher argument that Russia has been quite successful in evading external sanctions on importing consumer goods during the war by relying on smuggling networks. Apparently quite successfully, according to them. “The Russian government also tolerates outright smuggling in order to help the economy fill gaps that domestic production cannot meet. Entire sectors of retail have gone gray with the state’s tacit blessing, since the alternative is empty shelves and political trouble,” they write. They frame this as though it shows how badly Russia manages its economy. How successfully evading foreign sanctions is a bad thing from Russians’ viewpoint is, well, hard to understand!

The following argument makes sense if we accept the lazy assumption that the war in Afghanistan destroyed the USSR’s economy:

The wartime economy is difficult to structurally dismantle in other ways, as well. Defense and security spending now accounts for around 40 percent of all federal expenditure, an unprecedented level in Russian history and likely higher than even during Soviet-era militarization in the 1970s and 1980s. The number of enterprises in Russia’s military-industrial complex has roughly tripled since the invasion, and these firms now employ around four and a half million people. War-related manufacturing grew by 20 percent in 2025 alone.

Michael Krätke rightly pointed to the fact that an equivalent amount of government stimulus channeled into civilian spending would be more effective in boosting the economy than the military spending. Gunitsky and Morris are so focused on the concept that the Russian economy is doomed to disaster no matter what that it sounds more like cheerleading for Russian failure than a realistic analysis of its war economy.

But for the latter, the focus seems to be on polemics, based on shaky assumptions going back to the idea that the Afghanistan War destroyed the Soviet Union.

This discussion from British Channel 4 from November deals with Russia’s war economy: (2)

Notes:

(1) Gunitsky, Seva & Morris, Jeremy (2026): The Inertia of Russia’s War: Why Putin Can’t End the Conflict. Foreign Affairs 06/03/2026. <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russia/inertia-russias-war> (Accessed: 2026-05-06).

(2) Booming or breaking? The truth about Russia’s war economy. Channel 4 News YouTube channel 11/207/2025. <https://youtu.be/qg5PWLfvlJw?si=HqLxpsYNnNt1Kcy1> (Accessed: 2026-05-06).

Confusingly multiple truths on the Ukraine-Russia War (Includinng Ukrainian Nazis and Russia's war economy)

The Russia-Ukraine War that’s been going on since 2022 has often been a reminder of the banal observation that “multiple things can be true at once.”

It can be true (and is) that the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 by Russia, Ukraine, the UK and the US that committed Ukraine to give up its legacy nuclear weapons included a pledge by the parties to respect Ukraine’s national sovereignty. It can also be true (and is) that there were no mutual defense commitments by the parties in the event that one party did violate Ukraine’s national sovereignty. (1)

It can be true (and is) that when Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and incorporated it into Russia it was violating the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and international law against invading another country. It can also be true (and is) that Crimea was the key base for the Russian Black Sea fleet and Russia considers control of it critical to their national security as they understand it.

Nazis in Ukraine

It can be true (and is) that there are Nazis in Ukraine. It can also be true (and is) that Russian propaganda has grossly exaggerated the influence of Ukrainian Nazis on the current government’s policies and goals.

Marta Havryshko recently provided some current analysis of the “brown” (Nazi) part of the Ukrainian political spectrum. First, the bad news:

Neo-Nazi networks are deeply embedded in parts of Ukraine’s military structure. Their presence is visible in units such as Azov, the Third Assault Brigade, the Russian Volunteer Corps, Bratstvo, the German Volunteer Corps, Karpatska Sich, and others. Yet Ukraine’s Western backers continue to arm, fund, and train these units without meaningful scrutiny.

Even more striking is the normalization of Nazi imagery itself. Official Ukrainian military channels and mainstream media regularly publish images of soldiers wearing swastikas, Waffen-SS insignia, and patches linked to neo-Nazi groups like Combat 18 and Misanthropic Division. This is no longer treated as scandalous. It has been normalized. (2)

She writes that the de-politicization of the Azov unit of the Ukrainian army was over-emphasized in Western reporting to the point of whitewashing the “brown” influence in the Ukrainian forces. While it may be based on a pragmatic consideration, the continuing influence she describes of far-right ideologues in the military is a potentially serious problem for Ukraine’s future.

Some far-right parties and factions in Europe more generally are pro-Russian in their orientation. Ukrainian Nazis tend to be anti-Russian.

Without getting too deeply into these particular toxic weeds, the far-right, authoritarian parties in the EU Parliament – the main democracy-hating Nationalist International parties - are mainly organized into two groups: the Patriots for Europe and the Europe of Sovereign Nations Group.

Overt neo-Nazis are (currently!) much fringier that the more clean-shaven aspiring fascists.

Of course, the turn to [supporting] Russia was not adopted by the entire extreme right. Rather, the war against Ukraine, which has been going on since 2014 and entered a new phase in 2022, led to a marked formation of camps. While pro-Russian positions prevail in the FPÖ [Austrian Freedom Party], in the "alternative media" landscape, in conspiracy-inclined groups and in parts of the "New Right," or at least a strategic equidistance is insisted on, in the neo-Nazi spectrum partisanship for Ukraine on the basis of a racist reading of the conflict and revisionist historical analogies dominates.

Russia appears [to them] as a revenant of the Soviet Union, which - as it had already happened in the Second World War - unleashed the "hordes of Inner and East Asia" to subjugate "Europe and the white world". The Austrian neo-Nazi milieu shares this view with like-minded people in Ukraine itself as well as in other European countries, which is also reflected in corresponding networking activities. On August 24, 2024 - Ukraine's Independence Day - the pan-European alliance "Nation Europe" was founded at a meeting in Lviv in western Ukraine. This sees itself as a networking platform against Russian expansionism and unites organizations from all over Europe. [my emphasis] (3)

So, yes, there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine and Zelenskyy’s government probably is too tolerant of their presence in the military. Neo-Nazis are not running the government.

Is the war overwhelming Russia’s economy?

It can be true that the war is putting real strains on Russia’s economy. It can also be true that Western hopes that Russia’s economic weaknesses will undercut their war effort have been overblown.

Michael Krätke, in a new article on the damage the war is doing to the Russian economy. wrestles with the multiple-things-can-be-true challenge in a recent short (four pages) article on Russia’s wartime economy.

He asserts the claim that seems to be pretty generally accepted that Russia has cut back on the publication of much of its economic data and what they do publish tends to be less than accurate. On the other hand, he cites the Russian Ministry of Development figures reporting that in early 2026 by 0.3 to 0.4 percent. And he notes, “All government forecasts for the coming years claim no more than growth of around one percent.”

He writes that “the prices of basic foodstuffs such as bread, potatoes or cucumbers have more than doubled since December 2025 alone, even according to the Russian statistical office Rosstat.” He doesn’t cite the particular source for that claim, but it’s at least consistent with the price rises that the current Iran War has been causing worldwide.

According to him, the economic burdens of the war have only recently become sharply felt in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

But given the assumption that he shares that Russia’s published economic statistics are bad information, he doesn’t make clear where the numbers he’s citing for his own arguments are provided. Which is probably partially due to space constraints. While the multiple-things-can-be-true-at-the-same-time consideration applies to the economy as well, it’s hard to evaluate them without some ideas of the sources.

In a backhanded acknowledgement that the economic sanctions on Russia failed to have the hoped-for effect on Russia’s ability to continue the war, he writes: “Ukraine's supporters have been just as inconsistent and hesitant about sanctions as they were about supplying weapons to the invaded country.” He argues they were “much too slow and much too soft.“

But in the multiple-things vein, Krätke reports on the stimulative effect since 2022 of what is called military Keynesianism, in which the increase in government funding for military goods stimulates the economy more generally:

Since 2004, the Putin regime has pursued one rearmament program after another, and in 2022 it converted the entire economy to war [priorities]. The country's military-industrial complex has grown almost explosively in the past four years: at the beginning with emergency measures such as maximum utilization of the existing facilities, the reduction of production times or the introduction of a three-shift system with a six-day working week.

Krätke makes an interesting use of the longtime anti-militarist argument that spending on military production inevitably results in at least a relative short-changing of civilian production. As President Dwight Eisenhower put it in his famous 1953 “Chance for Peace” speech: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” (5) Krätke stresses the damage that higher military spending is doing to the Russian economy, in his view.

Without going into greater detail here, military expenditures generally are less stimulative than equivalent amounts of government spending on civilian projects, not least because of the large and poorly-regulated profit margins on major military contracts. But conservatives generally find military-related spending as more virtuous than civilian spending.

However, it is widely accepted that wartime spending booms can stimulate the economy while also causing potentially serious economic imbalances, even if the overall economy is growing at a healthy pace.

Krätke concludes his article with, “Russia’s war economy is hitting up against its limits.”

So here also we have a multiple-things-can-be-true-at-the-same-time situation. It can be true (and is) that wartime military spending can provide relatively quick economic stimulus. It can also be true (and is) that a lopsided emphasis on rapidly building up the military can also cause real economic problems.

And when it comes to economic sanctions more generally, it can be true (and is) that economic sanctions can create important pressure on a country to change its behavior. But it can also be true (and is) that economic sanctions alone cannot reasonably be expected to produce a rapid change in a country’s existing regime or quickly force a concession on a matter the targeted country considers vital to its national interest or survival. Decades of US experience with sanctions on Iraq and Iran provide substantial evidence for that.

And imposing sanctions on a country is often a prelude to war, which the examples of Iraq and Iran also illustrate.

This discussion from half a year ago from British Channel 4 News addresses issues with the Russian war economy. Elina Ribakova in it discusses the limited effectiveness of the sanctions on Russia and Russia’s continuing disadvantages as a petrostate. (6)

Notes:

(1) Ukraine, Nuclear Weapons, and Security Assurances at a Glance. Arms Control Association March 2022. (Accessed: 2026-04-06).

(2) Havryshko, Marta (2026): Ukraine's military has a real Nazi problem. Responsible Statecraft 06/02/2026. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/nazis-in-ukraine-military/> (Accessed: 2026-04-06).

(3) Pflegerl, Phillip & Weidinger, Bernhard (2026): Globalisierter Antiglobalismus: Internationale Beziehungen des österreichischen Rechtsextremismus, 386. In: Handbuch Rechtsextremismus in Österreich. Vienna: Falter Verlag. My translation to English.

(4) Krätke, Michael (2026): Putins Kriegswirtschaft: Propaganda und Realität. Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 6/2026, 9-12.

(5) Address "The Chance for Peace" Delivered Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors. 04/16/2026. The American Presidency Project. <https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-chance-for-peace-delivered-before-the-american-society-newspaper-editors> (Accessed: 2026-04-06).

(6) Booming or breaking? The truth about Russia’s war economy. Channel 4 News YouTube channel 11/27/2025. <https://youtu.be/qg5PWLfvlJw?si=KQV8YqWs6cfhJFNu> (Accessed: 2026-04-06).

Historical turning points: recognizing them is tricky, Iran War version

Turning points in history are tricky to recognize. And also tricky for historians to describe even when they all assume they were historical turning points.

The current US-Israel War on Iran has certainly become Trump’s biggest headache of the moment – although there are millions of pages of Epstein files yet to be released.

In scale, of course, the current conflict does not match the Vietnam war, which went on for years, led to the deaths of 58,220 US soldiers, and is often perceived as the totemic and unmatchable example of US hubris. By comparison with the Vietnam odyssey, Iran feels more like a day trip.

But in terms of consequence, it is still possible that the “excursion” will prove to be the bigger geopolitical turning point for the unrivalled superpower, the moment when the US will have to concede it mishandled a war not just because it had no convincing battle plan, but also no grand strategy to match how the contemporary world works. In an interconnected world, Trump believes progress is achieved through conflict, not cooperation. [my emphasis] (1)

In the thirty years or so after 1989, when the Warsaw Pact began to break apart quicky, the US was the single “hyperpower” in the world. This is also called the “unipolar moment.” But sometime around the start of the Trump 1.0 government, China had become powerful enough economically and militarily strong enough that it was a real “peer competitor” to the US, now sharing that status with Purin’s Russia, which is economically weaker than China but still has a nuclear military force on a level with those of the US.

The NATO alliance had been the single largest geopolitical “power multiplier” of the United States. But in Trump 2.0, the US has been taking a Javier-Milei-style chainsaw to US alliances and devastated the State Department, leaving us now in a situation where the Iran War is seriously damaging the entire world economy and the US diplomacy around that war hardly even deserves to be called diplomacy.

I don’t quote Fareed Zakaria very frequently, because his commentary is too often vague and superficial. But in this recent commentary, he makes a decent observation about the contrast between the first Trump regime (2017-2021) and the current one:

[T]his time, [Trump] has surrounded himself with people whose chief qualification is fealty. The less distinguished the resume, the better. Such people owe everything to him. Process has given way to impulse, procedure to instinct, government to gut. But the starkest difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 is not policy. It is enrichment [i.e., massive corruption], its scale, its brazenness, its open contempt for restraint. (2)

Elections matter in democracies. And a near-majority of voters in 2024 selected the guy who David Cay Johnston consistently calls “the third-generation head of a four-generation white-collar crime family” to serve as President again.

And this really has pushed both allies and adversaries to start readjusting urgently to a world in which the US cannot be counted on as a reliable partner on geopolitical commitments and has to a large extent abandoned what we normally describe as diplomacy in managing foreign affairs.

The various foreign policy establishments are trying hard to reorient themselves in the new environment, as Wintour observes:

For the US foreign policy establishment, exemplified by the Council on Foreign Relations, the missteps in Iran are the final confirmation that Trump’s highly personalised, instinctive system of predatory diplomacy creates only more disorder.

Last week, the CFR launched a fundamental review of US strategy post-Trump. Its convener, Rebecca Lissner, has already warned the war “has delivered a potentially fatal blow to a US-led international order that was already on life support”. Allies are hedging, middle powers are forming their own coalitions, and regions once firmly in Washington’s orbit are shifting toward new power centres, she said. The former state department official Mira Rapp-Hooper was more brutal at Chatham House, describing it as superpower suicide. [my emphasis]

Notes:

Wintour, Patrick (2026): Could Trump’s Iran ‘excursion’ be a bigger global turning point than Vietnam? Guardian 05/31/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/may/31/donald-trump-iran-excursion-vietnam-war> (Accessed: 2026-31-05).

(2) Trump's Iran, China & US actions have set 3 new stages-Fareed's Take roundup. CNN YouTube channel 05/31/2026. <https://youtu.be/qLhJuLAnY4M?si=7J1j7rh0noez_MXE> (Accessed: 2026-31-05).

How segregationist hacks commemorate the American Revolution

This is a bit of highbrow hackery about the American Revolution, from Bradley Birzer of the famously rightwing Hillsdale College.

Some of his talks about the politics of the American Revolution and the early Republic is just dumb but vague pablum delivered in a “highbrow” tone. After 25:00 in the video, he hauls out the rightwing trope, beloved by segregationists, that the Founders favored a republic which they thought was something radically different from democracy, the latter of which they supposedly hated.

And it’s the same old hack segregationist nonsense it always was. This is more than enough to be extremely cautious about his interpretations and formulations.

Mike Caulfield takes a look at the background of this segregationist trope and explains:

It was of course popularized by the John Birch Society Blue Book, where it was a central tenet that democracy was a scam by which majoritarian rule would lead to the collapse of Western Civilization.

But underneath it all is the idea that majority rule would lead to social welfare policies and racial integration. And more specifically, there is a panic that over time demographic shifts will be against them and those groups might wield power in ways that they have in the past. (2)

John Micek quotes George Thomas, who calls the trope “a dangerous and wrong argument.”

“Enabling sustained minority rule at the national level is not a feature of our constitutional design, but a perversion of it,” Thomas argues, pointing to such Republicans as U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, of Utah, who have been trotting out this corrosive chestnut as a way to justify the limited kind of political participation envisioned by the current incarnation of the GOP.

“The founding generation was deeply skeptical of what it called ‘pure’ democracy and defended the American experiment as ‘wholly republican,'” Thomas writes. “To take this as a rejection of democracy misses how the idea of government by the people, including both a democracy and a republic, was understood when the Constitution was drafted and ratified. It misses, too, how we understand the idea of democracy today.”

He pointed out that President Abraham Lincoln, whom Republicans like to embrace when it’s convenient, “used constitutional republic and democracy synonymously, eloquently casting the American experiment as government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And whatever the complexities of American constitutional design, Lincoln insisted, ‘the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible.’” (3)

I also like to recall the 1790s, when the John Adams’ Federalists and Jefferson’s Republicans became the two dominant parties in American politics. Many conservative-leaning Federalists were so horrified at the excesses of the French Revolution that they identified democracy with the most repressive French Revolutionary governments. So they decided that they would start calling the Republicans “democrats” to smear them.

The Jeffersonians reacted to that polemical move by … changing their name to the Democratic-Republican Party. They thought they sounded pretty good! That party would dominate national politics from the first four decades of the 19th century. Until 1824, they mainly still used the name Republicans in campaigning, and Democrats after that.

So apparently not a whole lot of Americans in those days thought “democracy” was a dirty word! (4)

Birzer does talk about the significance of the cotton gin for slavery. As an explanation from the National Park Service puts it, “An unforeseen byproduct of Whitney's invention, a labor-saving device, was to help preserve the institution of slavery in the South by making cotton production highly profitable.” (5)

But he does so in a way that minimizes the ugliness of the institution of slavery pre-cotton-gin. And Southern slavery was not just an unfortunate by-product of an advance in technology. It was a human institution and one that inevitably would poison a democracy.

Lyn Martin gives a more complete version of the point:

It is impossible to remember Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin without also recognizing his contribution to antebellum slavery in the United States. His legacy therefore, will always be tarnished with his impact on slavery.

However, it is important to note that Whitney also figured out how to manufacture muskets by using a machine method, making the parts interchangeable. This technique also proved to be revolutionary, allowing for the mass production of muskets beginning in 1798. (6)

Birzer also makes a hack argument about early US imperialism in the video which is so lame I won’t bother to repeat it here.

But rightwing tropes seem never to fade out completely. And the republic-not-a-democracy one will probably get more of a workout than usual over the next couple of months with the publicity about the 250th anniversary of the Revolution.

I also discussed this segregationist nonsense in two posts, The “America-is-a-republic-not-a-democracy” trope and Once again on the republic-not-a-democracy nonsense. The former also discusses a particular vintage-1965 version of the argument by a professor, Willmoore Kendall, which is a painful 14 pages to read!

Notes:

(1) Book Talk | The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Experiment in Liberty. Quincy Institute YouTube channel 05/28/2026. <https://www.youtube.com/live/qAxrnTVQh8E?si=0tgKfJq88ZK0r-Xz> (Accessed: 2026-28-05). This is a reminder that the Quincy Institute does have some conservative-libertarians featured, though it stress the “restrainer” foreign policy position which is not exclusively associated with the left, right, or even the center.

(2) Caulfield, Mike (): Where “A Republic, not a Democracy” Came From. Medium 03/06/2021. <https://medium.com/@holden/where-a-republic-not-a-democracy-came-from-67853e9c1375> (Accessed: 2026-30-05).

(3) Micek, John (2021): ‘We’re a republic not a democracy’: Here’s what’s so undemocratic about this GOP talking point. Pennsylvania Capital-Star 05/20/2021. <https://penncapital-star.com/commentary/were-a-republic-not-a-democracy-heres-whats-so-undemocratic-about-this-gop-talking-point-john-l-micek/> (Accessed: 2026-30-05).

(5) Eli Whitney. National Park Service n/d. <https://www.nps.gov/people/eli-whitney.htm> (Accessed: 2026-28-05).

(6) Lyn Martin (2020): Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin – A Mixed Legacy. Freedom Center Voices 12/09/2020. <https://freedomcenter.org/voice/eli-whitney-cotton-gin/> (Accessed: 2026-31-05).

Iran War Monthly Summaries: Month 3 (May 2026)

The current US-Israeli War on Iran began on Febuary 28, three months ago.

And there’s no obvious end in sight.

The International Crisis Group provides a useful summary of the current situation with the Strait of Hormuz. with helpful graphics:

The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz is a contentious element in negotiations [I think that qualifies as understatement!] to end the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and an issue of significant interest to countries nearby and far away.

The strait is an international waterway and the right to transit it is protected by international law. Nonetheless, Tehran’s influence over the strait is a tremendous source of leverage in its negotiations with the U.S. to end the war. Iran, which spent decades preparing for conflict with a conventionally superior adversary, made blocking shipping through the strait a major (though untested) component of its planning. After the U.S. and Israel launched their assault on Iran on 28 February – which is widely viewed as violating UN Charter prohibitions of the use of force – Tehran turned one of world’s most important waterways into a weapon. The U.S. has countered by imposing its own blockade of Iranian ports. Though a ceasefire that began on 7-8 April (depending on time zone) has tamped down the air war that began on 28 February, Iran and the U.S. continue to contest control of the strait.

Iran and the U.S. are both betting that they can inflict sufficient economic consequences on their foes to strengthen their position at the negotiating table, while mitigating costs to themselves. Meanwhile, the strait remains closed to most traffic, and the war’s global economic consequences continue to mount. [my emphasis] (1)

Trita Parsi discusses the current state of the war with Hasan Piker – who just got banned from the UK for criticizing Israel. (2)

In today’s news, Israel is striking Beirut again. The Israeli aggression against Lebanon – apparently with the goal of expanding Greater Israel into Lebanon – is part of the war with Iran. Lebanon’s main military force defending against Israeli attacks is the pro-Iran militia Hezbollah, not the much weaker Lebanese army. (3)

The Intercept reports on a pro-Israel influence operation directed by Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale.

A company run by former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, hired by the Israeli government to push pro-Israel views on a major conservative media network, has directed $13 million from Israel to several Republican digital strategy firms and allies, according to a previously unreported document filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Parscale was hired in part to influence major right-wing Christian media company Salem Media Group, where he is also an executive. His firm spent hundreds of thousands on ads with a Salem subsidiary. As part of the contract, Parscale’s firm also sent millions to other firms run by some of his closest political allies. …

Among those that received millions of dollars’ worth of payments related to the contract are ventures like SparkFire, an AI chatbot company leading a mass texting campaign, and a shadowy firm run by longtime mainstream Republican strategist Mike Shields. (None of the figures or firms in this story responded to requests for comment.)

Israel initially directly hired Parscale’s firm, Clock Tower X, last September with a contract worth $6 million. The new filing reveals that his firm has received over $15 million from Havas Media Network, an international media company, on behalf of the Israeli state. (4)

Esther Solomon reports for Haaretz on Israel’s new choice for their general consul in New York:

Benjamin Netanyahu has turned a corner in his relations with American Jews. No, not to even pretend to rebuild ties with the liberal majority, but to spit in their faces.

Israel's prime minister is pushing the appointment of eye-poppingly far-right pundit and advisor Caroline Glick to the post of consul general in New York, home to the largest Jewish community in the world outside of Israel, according to a report by Liza Rozovsky in Haaretz.

If you're not already familiar with Glick, count yourself lucky. Her views on Israel and the Palestinians could be charitably termed "hardline": The Jewish people are indigenous to the Land of Israel, Palestinians are an invented people, and Israel should declare sovereignty over the whole West Bank. She laid out her "one-state plan for peace in the Middle East" in an eponymous 2016 book in English. The book's Hebrew title dispensed with the niceties and was entitled "Annexation Now." [my emphasis] (5)

She also recalls:

Years ago, Netanyahu decided to subvert U.S. political bipartisanship on Israel, tried to humiliate Democratic presidents while accepting humiliation from Trump, and constantly declared that evangelicals were better allies than U.S. Jews (except for the ultra-wealthy U.S. Jewish right-wingers who subsidize him). [my emphasis]

Trump and his cowboy Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth stepped into this mess bigtime. And finding a solution would be a difficult feat even for an Administration that was capable of conducing complex diplomacy. Maybe Pete can send the Iranian government a photo of his Crusader tattoo to convince them to make concessions.

Notes:

(1) The State of the Strait: The Role of Hormuz in the Middle East War So Far. International Crisis Group 05/29/2026. <https://www.crisisgroup.org/visual-explainers/hormuz/> (Accessed: 2026-01-06).

(2) Trita Parsi Breaks Down the Endgame With Iran. HasanAbi YouTube channel 05/30/2026. <https://youtu.be/LcloUmMPMWk?si=P-1KUEK49l-8DotK> (Accessed: 2026-30-05).

(3) Israel's Netanyahu orders military to attack targets in Beirut southern suburbs. Al-Monitor 06/01/2026. <https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2026/06/israels-netanyahu-orders-military-attack-targets-beirut-southern-suburbs> (Accessed: 2026-01-06).

(4) Cleveland-Stout, Nick & Sweet, Jacqueline (2026): Ex-Trump Campaign Chief Funneled Millions of Israeli Government Money to His Longtime Allies’ Companies. The Intercept 05/28/2026. <https://theintercept.com/2026/05/28/israeli-government-money-brad-parsc/> (Accessed: 2026-29-05).

(5) Solomon, Esther (2026): Netanyahu Won't Stop Spitting in American Jews' Faces. Haaretz 05/27/2026. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/haaretz-today/2026-05-27/ty-article/.highlight/netanyahu-wont-stop-spitting-in-american-jews-faces/0000019e-6a3d-d1b9-a9bf-fabdbf5b0000?gift=a4ab5dc94ff44e02b63b27c08503fc99> (Accessed: 2026-01-06).

How the Democrats need to go about fighting a rogue reactionary Supreme Court

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern warned in November 2024 that the outrageous Roberts Court decision basically exempted the President from the requirement to follow the law in its Trump v. United States decision of 2024. And that it would allow the Trumpists to put the pedal to the metal on its authoritarian project to destroy American democracy, which they accurately described as follows:

[O]n arguably the big issue, what presidential power actually means, Trump couldn’t be clearer: He believes the president is an elected authoritarian who can and indeed should concentrate all state power within himself and wield it to achieve his own personal ambitions and retributions. There is no daylight between his own selfish interests and the state’s needs, because to his mind, he is the state. And he is forever immune from punishment when he chooses to corruptly manipulate the tools of his office to punish his enemies and reward his friends. He is the state, but he is also the law. [my emphasis] (1)

The Democrats have to be aggressive on restoring the rule of law, which of course is intimately connected to the massive corruption of the current regime that the Democrats have to push back against aggressively, now and for the years after Trump is out of power.

David Sirota wrote in 2022 about one of the worst historical “lessons” that came out of Franklin Roosvelt’s successful fight against the blatantly partisan, anti-New Deal Supreme Court, which is often referred to as Roosevelt’s “court-packing” scheme and is commonly cited as a failure on FDR’s part, which is almost the opposite of true:

Public support for Roosevelt’s expansion initiative only truly cratered when the court’s conservative majority suddenly halted its attempts to block the New Deal. In particular, the court’s surprising decisions to uphold a state minimum wage and then the pro-union Wagner Act deflated public support for court expansion, as did the subsequent retirement of one of the court’s most conservative justices. The court soon after declined to block Social Security.

“Evidence accumulated over the years goes against that notion of the (close) relationship between the public and the court,” wrote Caldiera. “I prefer, instead, a much more straightforward account: The Supreme Court outmaneuvered the president. Through a series of shrewd moves, the court put President Roosevelt in the position of arguing for a radical reform on the slimmest of justifications.”

But here’s the key point: He notes that the court’s “shrewd moves” that “outmaneuvered” FDR were in practice “an important jurisprudential retreat” on policy.

“President Roosevelt in essence offered the Supreme Court a choice between substantive policy and structural integrity,” he concludes. “The court wisely chose to give up on the substantive issues and preserve its structural integrity.” (2)

Norm Ornstein and David Rothkopf recently held a very informative discussion about what will be required of the Democrats on both policy and politics to undo the massive damage John Roberts and Donald Trump have done to the basic functioning of the legal system in the US, with the title “The One and Only Way to Truly Defeat the Trump Crime Family”: (3)

Notes:

(1) Lithwick, Dahlia and Stern, Mark Joseph (2024): The One Reason a Second Trump Presidency Would Be So Much Worse. Slate 11/04/2024. <https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/11/2016-election-supreme-court-helps-trump.html> (Accessed: 2026-31-05).

(2) Sirota, David (2022): FDR’s Lesson About The Supreme Court Rampage. The Lever 07/08/2022. <https://www.levernews.com/fdrs-lesson-about-the-supreme-court-rampage/> (Accessed: 2026-31-05).

(3) The One and Only Way to Truly Defeat the Trump Crime Family. The DSR Network YouTube channel. <https://youtu.be/ViLgo5ivXCw?si=WFtya2Bv6za-l65-> (Accessed: 2026-31-05).

The US-Israel War on Iran rolls on and does more and more damage

Israel is continuing Netanyahu‘s permanent-war policy. The government is aggressively pushing forward on further illegal settlements in the West Bank. And further undermining what legitimacy and governing authority the Palestinian Authority has there.

While Israeli land seizure orders are certainly not uncommon in the occupied West Bank, this case has alarmed residents and human rights organizations because the plots are located in Area A. This is the section of the West Bank where, under the Oslo Accords [of 1993 and 1995], the Palestinian Authority officially maintains full civil and security control; in Area B, the PA must coordinate security with Israel, while Area C, which comprises more than 60 percent of the territory, remains under full Israeli control. (1)

Iran has been insisting that any peace settlement has to include not only the US but also Israel and that it has to cover the Israeli invasion and war-making in Lebanon.

Zvi Bar’el reported on May 29:

Initial reports that Iranian and American negotiators had agreed on a memorandum of understanding that was awaiting U.S. President Donald Trump's approval didn't explain what was agreed, what remains in dispute, what the agenda will be for the talks slated to take place during a 60-day cease-fire, whether Iran is willing to let its highly enriched uranium be removed from the country or what it would get in return.

Apparently, the blows the countries have exchanged over the past week still aren't viewed as ending the cease-fire. Like the ones in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, this cease-fire has been characterized by an elasticity that is meant to reconcile the tactical need to demonstrate a resolute military posture, even if it has no strategic goal, with the need to avoid ruining the chances of the ambiguous diplomatic process. [my emphasis] (2)

That’s because Netanyahu and the Israeli supporters of his war policy don’t seem to make any practical distinction anymore between ongoing military operations and a ceasefire. Netanyahu’s goal is for Israel to dominate the region and take more territory in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. And probably more after that.

Bar’el also reports, “the Board of Peace is on the verge of bankruptcy due to lack of funding.” Wait, how is that possible? I thought other countries were giving Trump billions to serve on the Board. As The Independent reports:

Concerns were that the charter was so broad it amounted to an attempt by Trump to replace the United Nations (an institution he has made no secret of hating) with his own private members’ club. Trump had declared: “We can do pretty much anything we want to do.”

But fast forward to May, and as Trump overcomplicates an already impossibly hard peace deal in Iran, his Board of Peace brainchild is flailing.

It seems a bit broken: promised US funding has reportedly yet to materialise, other funds are frozen, and its mission is “stuck in limbo”. (3)

Yes, “a bit broken”!

But, hey, Trump’s really “ownin’ the libs,” huh?

And the finances of the board are going about as well as we would expect from a Trump grift:

At the time of its inauguration, Trump claimed lifetime membership of the board of peace could be bought for a hefty price tag of $1bn.

By February, states had pledged around $7bn for a Gaza relief package. Trump promised a further $10bn in US funding, although he did not say where that money would come from.

To date, “zero funds have been deposited” into the official fund, which is administered by the World Bank, and endorsed by the United Nations, according to the Financial Times.

Trita Parsi gives this brief update on Israel, Iran, and Lebanon: (4)

Notes:

(1) Zaish, Shata (2026): In first since Oslo, Israel seizing land for army base inside West Bank city +972 Magazine 05/27/2026. <https://www.972mag.com/oslo-israel-seizing-land-army-base-west-bank-city/> (Accessed: 2026-30-05).

(2) Bar’el, Zvi (2026): Trump Is Trapped Between Iran and Lebanon. Israel Could Pay the Price. Haaretz 05/29/2026. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-05-29/ty-article/.premium/trump-is-trapped-between-iran-and-lebanon-israel-could-pay-the-price/0000019e-7108-df34-a39e-712ab8be0000?gift=f4f7b1b59bfe4bfe970dc2bd937ba2ad> (Accessed: 2026-30-05).

(3) Trump’s board of peace is flailing – just like the president. The Independent 05/28/2026. <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/trump-board-of-peace-iran-gaza-b2984416.html> (Accessed: 2026-30-05).

(4) New regional logic: If Israel strikes Lebanon Iran strikes back at UAE. Middle East Eye YouTube channel 05/29/2026. <https://youtu.be/Dg02M6Ua95w?si=gp6ZMTY88XnC2x7P> (Accessed: 2026-30-05).

Russia and Europe and the Ukraine War

The Russia-Ukraine War is starting to feel for a lot of us not directly involved like a permanent feature of the world now. I mean, the Korean War is still officially not settled. But it hasn’t been an active shooting war for decades.

There is a new report about a Russian drone strike in Romania. Officially the Russians are denying they had anything to do with it. It’s possible it was part of a group of drones on the way to strike Ukraine and one of them just strayed and accidentally struck a building in Romania. Oopsie! Fog of war, you know. Stuff happens!

The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, has said the alliance is “ready to defend every inch” of its territory after a Russian drone hit an apartment building in Romania, a member state, during an overnight attack on neighbouring Ukraine.

The incident in Galați, which injured two people, prompted swift condemnation and the threat of repercussions, even as Russia denied the reports of the involvement of a Russian drone as “groundless”.

The strike in Romania is the latest example of the war in Ukraine spilling beyond the country’s borders, amid growing concern over Russia’s wider campaign of hybrid warfare across Europe.

Gen Gheorghe Maxim, a stand-in commander for the Romanian armed forces’ joint staff, told a news conference on Friday that the strike in Galati was not “an attack from Russia against Romania”, but that “Romanians should understand that Russia is a threat to the security of the countries in the area.” (1)

But given the public signals that Russia has been sending lately, I’m guessing there’s at least an even chance this was intentional. Ukraine has been making drone strikes inside Russia, including on Moscow. And from what military commentators are saying, Ukraine couldn’t conduct those particular kinds of strikes without help from NATO countries. Now, there is a war going on and it was Russia that invaded Ukrainian territory, so it’s totally within the laws of war for Ukraine to attack inside Russia. (Yes, I know “War” Secretary Pete Hegseth thinks all this laws-of-war stuff is just sissy “woke” DEI nonsense, but still.)

Since Russia is pretty bogged down in Ukraine, I’m not especially worried that they intend to launch some full-blown attack on NATO and EU countries. But this kind of thing could also be a way for Russia to say, hey, if you NATO countries are helping Ukraine attack deep inside Russia, we have ways to make things uncomfortable on NATO’s eastern flank. If this stuff starts happening more in Estonia, Latvia, or especially Lithuania, things could get very sticky very quickly. Russia’s only land transportation corridor to its city of Kaliningrad is through the Suwałki Gap, aka the Suwalki Corridor, which is on the border between Poland and Lithuania and is mainly inhabited by Poles. If Russia tried to take control of that corridor, we would be in “NATO Article 5” territory. I would think at least Marco Rubio and maybe even J.D. Vance would know what that means.

There already was a drone incident in Latvia already in May. It even led to a change of government there:

Earlier this month, two drones entering Latvia from Russian territory crashed near oil facilities, intensifying public concern about whether the state could detect aerial threats.

Ukraine has launched an intensive long-range strike campaign against key Russian targets like air defense sites, refineries, pipelines, ports and strategic factories. Kyiv and NATO member countries accuse Russia of redirecting Ukrainian drones into allied airspace; they have also been spotted over Lithuania and Estonia.

The backlash over the Latvian incidents ultimately helped bring down the government of Prime Minister Evika Siliņa. Defense Minister Andris Sprūds resigned under pressure, and coalition tensions escalated into a broader collapse of the administration. (2)

Here we come back to the time-warp feeling that this war has been going on forever. It was true in February 2022 that Ukraine was not a member of NATO and that none of the NATO countries had a formal mutual-defense treaty with Ukraine. The EU Treaty also has a mutual defense clause, though it has never been formally invoked.

All that is still true today. The word “credibility” is probably the most overused word in the politics of international relations – often coupled with a superficial reference to the Munich Analogy. But if Russia did directly attack NATO territory, repelling that attack would have to take priority over supporting Ukraine. Especially now that the European allies can’t count on the US any more to play the role in mutual defense that it played until 2025.

Here is a discussion between Scott Lucas and Gilbert Doctorow, the latter apparently an advocate for Russia’s and Putin’s position on the Russia-Ukraine War. The informational blurb says the clip involves Lucas “[t]aking apart the pro-Kremlin propaganda of Russian-based Gilbert Doctorow, including his promotion of war crimes through targeted assassination of Ukraine’s leaders.” (3)

Lucas notes that Belarus has consistently refused Russian requests to enter the war with Ukraine as an active belligerent. That means, I suppose, that Belarus could somehow play a mediating role. But Belarus is siding with Ukraine.

Lucas sometimes seem to lean into an optimistic take in evaluating Ukraine’s prospects. He probably particularly emphasizes that here as a contrast to Doctorow’s position.

Notes:

(1) Beaumont, Peter (2026): Nato ready to defend ‘every inch’ of territory as Russian drone hits Romania. Guardian 05/29/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/29/russian-drone-romanian-apartments-wounding-two-people-and-starting-fire> (Accessed: 2026-29-05).

(2) Lunday, Chris (2026): No quick fix for Latvia’s drone crisis. Politico EU 05/2/2026. <https://www.politico.eu/article/no-quick-fix-for-latvias-drone-crisis/> (Accessed: 2026-29-05).

(3) Worried Kremlin Threatens to Obliterate Kyiv. Scott Lucas Worldview YouTube channel 05/29/2026. <https://youtu.be/yl6v3sINDfQ?si=h9-r9s8mdsYAqegp> (Accessed: 2026-29-05).

More peace news from the Peace President

The Peace President’s peace process seems to be a bit rocky at the moment:

The US has launched strikes on southern Iran in a test of the seven-week long ceasefire, as both sides played down hopes for an imminent peace deal even as negotiators from Tehran began new talks in Qatar.

US forces targeted missile launch sites and boats attempting to lay mines, US central command (Centcom) said on Tuesday, but stressed that the strikes did not indicate the ceasefire with Iran was over. (1)

Kind of like a ceasefire without the ceasing part?

Then in Lebanon, which Iran has been treating as part of the war that has to be a part of the peace deal: “Israel on Monday escalated its strikes on Lebanon, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that he had ordered the military to ‘crush’ Hezbollah. Iran has been adamant that any agreement to end the war include Lebanon.“ (2)

Trump also insisted that a final settlement has to include a list of countries that have to approved the Abraham Accords formally recognizing Israel: Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye. He’s also demanding that Bahrain and the UAE join; both are already members.

The stakes in all this fumbling, remarkably incompetent Trump regime diplomacy are high, obviously:

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), as of May 13, the cumulative shortfall in global oil deliveries from the Gulf was roughly one billion barrels. This shortfall has been absorbed by reduced oil demand (a consequence of higher prices); increased production outside the Gulf; and by a drop in global oil inventories of roughly 250 million barrels, as these were released to hold down prices in the absence of new production from the Gulf coming to the market. However IEA head Fatih Birol warned last week that inventories were dropping at an unsustainable pace, particularly with summer driving season approaching in the Northern Hemisphere. (3)

Will we really have to wait until January of 2029 before there’s a President in the Oval Office who can actually do diplomacy and not just endless grifting?

Notes:

(1) Yerushalmy, Jonathn (2026): US strikes Iran missile sites and mine laying vessels as Trump’s promised peace deal remains elusive. Guardian 05/25/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/26/us-strikes-iran-missile-sites-vessels-trump-peace-deal-elusive> (Accessed: 2026-25-05).

(2) Matthews, Sean (2026): Trump calls for 'mandatory' adherence to Abraham Accords in Iran ceasefire talks. Middle East Eye 05/25/2026. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/trump-calls-mandatory-adherence-abraham-accords-iran-ceasefire-talks> (Accessed: 2026-25-05).

(3) Sankaran, Karthik (2026): More Iran war? There goes the neighborhood, and global economy. Responsible Statecraft 05/26/2026. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/economy-iran-war/> (Accessed: 2026-25-05).

The Republicans’ “trans” obsession

I haven’t commented much on the transgender issue, which seems to have been the main moral-panic obsession of the Republicans for several years now. Mainly because the yammering about “the trans” is normally so painfully dumb and mean-spirited.

“Transgender” is a real thing. Including an actual medical condition, “gender dysphoria.” This is how Karl Bryant in the Encyclopedia Britannica defines it in signature sober Britannica style:

gender dysphoria (GD), formal diagnosis given by mental health professionals to people who experience distress because of a significant incongruence between the gender with which they personally identify and the gender with which they were born. The GD diagnosis appears in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5; 2013), the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA’s) official listing of psychiatric disorders. A clinical description of GID also appears in the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10; 1992). (The ICD-10 does not use the term gender dysphoria.) Although the diagnosis of GD is usually made by mental health care providers, much of the treatment for adults is endocrinological and surgical in nature and often follows World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People (2012). (1)

He goes on to stress: “Although gender nonconformity is not a mental disorder, GD is characterized by clinically significant mental anguish.”

And he notes, “With the development of successful surgical techniques and hormone replacement therapy, several thousand transsexual adults with persistent GD [gender dysphoria] have undergone a permanent gender reassignment.” Unfortunately, he doesn’t specify how much of the world is included in those “several thousand” who have undergone gender-reassignment surgery. Even if all of them were in the US, physical gender-reassignment surgery is hardly part of the everyday routine. People who don’t want to be conned by dishonest bigots should actually try to keep a sense of proportion.

Analysts from UCLA found in 2025: “More than 2.8 million people now identify as transgender in the US, including an estimated 724,000 youth, according to a new data analysis that is the largest of its kind to date.” (2)

In other words, it’s not as widespread as the common cold. But it’s also not just some fad among people who Republicans considered to be weirdos. It needs to be seen as a real condition, not some fantasy in the heads of mean-spirited authoritarian types.

And, not surprisingly, there are legitimate controversies around gender aphasia and sex-tradition care – and by “legitimate” I do not mean hate-mongering nonsense from rightwing polemicists: “Although the revisions to DSM-5 have assuaged some criticism, it has been argued that the diagnosis of GD mistakenly categorizes a medical condition as a mental health disorder. These critics often point to recent research that may indicate a biological basis for transsexuality.”

The Mayo Clinic also has a website with basic information on gender dysphoria. (3)

Medical research has long since recognized that gender is more complicated than “boys are boys” and “girls are girls.” In Western science, Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) were critically examining conventional assumptions about sexuality and recognizing that conventional heterosexuality is not a uniformly “normal” and healthy state for people.

How is the Trump movement, aka, the Republican Party, using the issue? Here’s how the Orange Anomaly himself has been using it, here in 2024 during the last Presidential race:

“No transgender, no operations — you know, they take your kid — there are some places, your boy leaves for school, comes back a girl. Okay? Without parental consent.” He added, “At first, when I was told that was actually happening, I said, you know, it’s an exaggeration. No: it happens. It happens. There are areas where it happens.” (4)

This is a classic cult-like formulation. Sex-adjustment operations are a lot more complicated than going to the clinic to have a mole removed or a routine physical. Anyone with a minimal knowledge of gender-adjustment treatment knows it’s a lie that it can be done in a single day. No school district in the United States – or any other country I know of – can decide to send a student to a surgeon for a quickie sex change operation. In many school districts, the school nurse can’t even give a student an aspirin without parental consent.

There may some Trump cult followers who really are dim enough to believe what Trump says. But even I, with low expectations about the cognitive abilities of Trump cultists, find that hard to believe. He’s lying on this. (Like on so many other things.) And essentially all his supporters know he’s lying about it. But it’s a sign of loyalty to pretend they believe it. And even to repeat it.

Know-Nothing hysteria about real gender-related issues is harmful to real people and if often deeply mean-spirited. For the Trump cult, being mean-spirited is part of their identity. (5)

“Gender” is not equivalent to reproductive biology. There are a number of societies past and present that recognize more than two genders. (6) And, as the pioneering American feminist Margaret Fuller said in her 1845 Woman in the Nineteenth Century put it, “Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.” [my emphasis]

Ideas Democrats should consider in countering Republican demagoguery on “the trans”

• Call out cult-like lies on the issue from Republicans.
• Start using the medical term “gender dysphoria” to remind people that we’re talking about a real medical condition here.
• Straightforwardly slap down superficial slogans like “boys playing in girls’ sports,” which even Gavin Newsom has adopted.
• Since the Republicans and the occasional Democratic empty suit will keep yammering about “the trans” for Lord-knows-how-long, use it also as an opportunity to talk about the real issue of “gender dysphoria” a shame the Republicans for promoting petty bigotry over a rare but serious real medical condition.
• Remember that for American voters with the slightest willingness or inclination to vote for Democrats, “be a decent person” is still an appealing concept.
• Adopt Tim Walz’ 2024 label for Republicans as “weird” over their obsession with “the trans” and slogans like Trump saying the Democrats want “transgender for everybody.”
  

Notes:

(1) Bryant, Karl. "gender dysphoria". Encyclopedia Britannica 05/18/2026. <https://www.britannica.com/science/gender-dysphoria> Accessed 23 May 2026.

(2) Levin, Sam (2025): More than 2.8m people in US identify as trans, including 724,000 youth, data shows. Guardian 08/20/2025. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/20/trans-people-us-data> (Accessed: 2026-23-05).

(3) Gender dysphoria. Mayo Clinic 01/01/2025. <https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dysphoria/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20475262> (Accessed: 2026-23-05).

(4) Dale, Daniel (2024): Fact check: Trump revives his lie that schools are secretly sending children for gender-affirming surgeries. CNN Politics 10/26/2024. <https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/26/politics/fact-check-trump-rogan-children-gender-affirming-surgeries> (Accessed: 2026-23-05).

(5) Boerner, Heather (2022): What the Science on Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender Kids Really Shows. Scientific American 05/12/2022. <https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/what-the-science-on-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-kids-really-shows/> (Accessed: 2026-23-05).

How Junk Science is Being Used Against Trans Kids. Scientific American YouTube channel 04/09/2026. <https://youtu.be/GOIWyP5uqgM?si=4OMT_90XcOeGBvn2> (Accessed: 2026-23-05).

(6) Britannica Editors. 6 Cultures That Recognize More than Two Genders. Encyclopedia Britannica 06/13/2025. <https://www.britannica.com/list/6-cultures-that-recognize-more-than-two-genders> (Accessed: 2026-23-05).

This weekend’s Administration pitch on the Iran War

It’s the weekend, and the stock markets will be shut down until Monday morning, so of course Trump is floating another garbled announcement about the Iran War being on the verge of a peace settlement.

Trita Parsi is obviously trying to be optimistic, and in this early response to the latest peace-agreement talk, he talks about how some of the concessions Iran is offering in this latest draft Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) could offer a big opportunity for a meaningful and durable peace settlement. (1)

We all need a good dose of optimism! And Trita does caution his audience not assume we’re on the verge of a big immediate breakthrough. But this is part of the dilemma with the Trump 2.0 regime: their diplomacy on the Middle east is chaotic in its best moments and has generally looked pretty incompetent. Even when Iran makes what looks like major diplomatic concessions, the Trump regime may not want to take it, and/or don’t know how to go about concluding a agreement even if they really want one.

Politico reports:

Trump did preview that the agreement would include a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a major priority for the White House and Gulf state allies after months of disruptions to global energy markets and commercial shipping traffic.

Trump revealed that he had a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “which, likewise, went very well.”

The announcement is the most significant moment in the war since he first announced a ceasefire early in April, bringing the most active and frenzied period of the fighting thus far to an abrupt but shaky close.

And it’s sure to frustrate influential figures within the GOP, who have urged the president to press on in his military campaign against Tehran and have expressed skepticism that Iran would truly relinquish its grip on the strait.

“A deal that is perceived to allow Iran to survive and possess the ability to control the Strait in the future will put Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Shia militias in Iraq on steroids,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has long cheered the military action in the Middle East, wrote on X Saturday. (2)

The Guardian reports on Iran’s public position:

However, Iran’s Fars news agency, which is close to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported that the strait of Hormuz would remain under Iranian control, a red line for the US. The news agency reported on Telegram that “the management of the Strait, determining the route, time, method of passage, and issuing permits will continue to be the monopoly and discretion of the Islamic Republic of Iran”.

It said Trump’s assertion that an agreement was nearly final was “inconsistent with reality”. (3)

It’s important to keep in mind that Iran has been insisting on including Israel’s war and occupation in Lebanon as part of the settlement of the current war.

Also, Mike Pompeo, Trump’s Secretary of State during his first term, complains the Trump’s latest announcement is too weak and looks too much like what Barack Obama did. Actually, as Trita Parsi notes, what the Iranians are proposing for nuclear controls in the new MOU actually goes farther than what Iran agreed to in the JCPOA agreement from which Trump breezily withdrew during his first term.

Notes:

(1) Trump’s Iran Deal Is America’s Biggest Defeat. Pyotr Kurzin YouTube channel 05/23/2026. <https://www.youtube.com/live/auvOADLjg50?si=uVaBaQSjUgbV9ECW> (Accessed: 2026-05-24).

(2) Johansen, Ben & Svirnovskiy, Gregory (2026): Trump says peace deal with Iran is imminent. Politico 05/23/2026. <https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/23/trump-peace-deal-iran-00935114> (Accessed: 2026-05-24).

(3) Olivares, José & Mackey, Robert (2026): Trump claims peace deal with Iran ‘largely negotiated’ with strait of Hormuz to open. The Guardian 05/24/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/23/trump-ceasefire-iran-strait-of-hormuz> (Accessed: 2026-05-24).

It may be time for the European allies to rethink their current policy on Ukrainian attacks in Russia

I posted earlier this month about Sergei Karaganov, a prominent Russian foreign policy intellectual who is reportedly taken serious by senior Russian authorities. He has been suggesting that the Russian government may need to send stronger signals to the European allies of Ukraine that there are limits to the attacks Moscow will tolerate on Russian territory.

John Mearsheimer spoke about these concerns recently in an interview. (1)

There are two broad areas of concern with the attacks inside Russia, both with drones and Ukrainian troops. They make for dramatic headlines, like this one from this past Monday: (2)

There was also a ground offensive of 2024-2025 into the Kursk area of Russian territory whose benefit for the Ukrainian war effort was always highly doubtful. And it ended with Ukrainian withdrawal:

Ukrainian soldiers fighting in Russia's Kursk region have described scenes "like a horror movie" as they retreated from the front lines.

The BBC has received extensive accounts from Ukrainian troops, who recount a "catastrophic" withdrawal in the face of heavy fire, and columns of military equipment destroyed and constant attacks from swarms of Russian drones.

The soldiers, who spoke over social media, were given aliases to protect their identity. Some gave accounts of a "collapse" as Ukraine lost Sudzha, the largest town it held. (3)

That incursion provided some morale-boosting headlines for a few weeks. But it didn’t provide any obvious significant military advantage. And Ukraine, which has a far smaller pool of potential soldiers than Russia, took losses in that chapter of the war. As the BBC report cited above commented, “Western officials estimate that Ukraine's Kursk offensive involved about 12,000 troops. They were some of their best-trained soldiers, equipped with Western-supplied weapons including tanks and armoured vehicles.” The Russians drove the Ukrainian forces out in 2025.

The German Tagesschau news service reported in late 2025 on the results of the operation: „For the first time since World War II, a foreign army stood on Russian territory. For Ukraine, it was the first significant offensive in a long time in the war against Russia.” (4)

There’s no question that its perfectly legitimate in terms of the laws of war and the normal practice of it for Ukraine to attack targets in Russia. Russia occupied and illegally annexed the Ukrainian province of Crimea in 2014. For years, they provided support, including some Russia soldiers, to pro-Russian secessionist forces in eastern Ukraine, particularly the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. And in 2022, Russia launched a full-on invasion of eastern Ukraine which continues with on-going combat today. The were illegal acts of aggression by Russia and Ukraine is still at war with Russia. So there’s no question that Ukraine can legitimately attack inside Russian territory.

How effective or advisable the attacks have been is another question.

Hitting the Russian “nuclear triad”

The Russians, like the US and other countries, have nuclear missiles based on the ground, on submarines based, and on planes. If – or rather, when – nuclear powers develop nuclear-attack drones, those would presumably be part of the aerial branch of the triad. (5)

Mearsheimer has been particularly critical of the June 1, 2025 Operation Spiderweb in which Ukrainian drones attacked several Russian airfields. An early analysis found:

The exact losses sustained by the Russian Aerospace Forces as a result of the Ukrainian drone attack have yet to be established, but they include at least seven Tu-95MS heavy strategic bombers, which are capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Several Tu-22M3 long-range bombers and at least one A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft were also destroyed. According to the Financial Times, the drones destroyed or damaged about 20 percent of Russia’s operationally ready long-range aviation.

Russia currently produces one strategic bomber per year, so it will take at least seven years to make up for the losses. The Tu-95MSs and Tu-22M3s were designed back in the Soviet era and are no longer in production, so as a carrier of cruise missiles, their destruction is a major blow to Russian long-range aviation. The loss of the A-50, meanwhile, will reduce the effectiveness of fighter and strike aircraft.

Operation Spiderweb was also a serious blow to Russia’s image. Strategic bombers, which only the United States, Russia, and China have in service, are a symbol of power and an important instrument for projecting force. It’s no coincidence that Russia resumed flights by strategic bombers back in 2007 in various regions of the world, including over neutral waters close to NATO countries.

Most importantly of all, the operation was an attack on one of the official elements of the nuclear triad: strategic aviation, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and nuclear submarines. Nuclear weapons are the main symbol of Russia’s global greatness. Accordingly, Operation Spiderweb was undoubtedly a blow to the Kremlin’s pride. [my emphasis] (6)

Mearsheimer has stressed repeatedly that attacks on elements of the nuclear triad like this had been considered strictly taboo before then in the long-standing nuclear balance of terror. And the fact that the Russian triad was attacked and even seriously damaged by Ukraine that is actively being supplied and supported by Western countries, including the US, was a particularly risky move that could lead Russian strategists to conclude that their own nuclear deterrence capacity is insufficient.

I’m convinced he’s right on that issue. The Western allies should insist that Ukraine stay away from any such attacks like that on the Russian nuclear triad. We still live in very much a world of nuclear bombs and as of now, we have no international arms control treaties still in effect.

“Strategic” and “tactical” bombing

Since the early years of bombing from planes, there has been a conventional distinction among Western powers between “tactical” and “strategic” bombing strategies. Tactical air power means aerial support for operations by land and sea forces. Strategic air power means targeting sites and structures that support the war enemy’s war effort, such as munitions factories, transportation hubs, and energy supplies. Strategic air power has also been used with the goal of undermining the civilian morale on the enemy side, a goal that we see being applied in the current US-Israeli War on Iran. And the results of using bombing to destroy the enemy civilians’ morale and provoking them to overthrow their own governments continues the remarkable record of failure it has consistently had since the First World War. (7)

Ukraine and Russia have both been employing strategic bombing against military facilities and military-related infrastructure of the other side. Those attacks are also legitimate for Ukraine to use against Russia. But given the concentration of the war since 2022 on Ukraine’s eastern oblasts (provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia), and given the far greater resources in manpower and industrial capacity Russia has over Ukraine, it would seem that the value of focusing attacks on those four occupied provinces would be a more effective use of Ukrainian military resources that attacks on “strategic” targets deeper inside Russia. It may well be that some of those deeper strategic attacks have been effective in reducing some of Russia’s warmaking capacity.

And that effective usage may well include some of targets struck in Moscow and its vicinity. But if Ukraine’s strategists are expected such attacks to destroy the enemy population’s morale, they are almost surely going to be disappointed.

Scott Lucas is another political analyst who does solid evaluations of Donald Trump and some of the current war issues. Including in this current podcast. (8) But he does seem tempted to overestimate the possible damage to public morale that Russia may been experiencing right now. I suspect that the devout neocon belief that the war that the USSR had in Afghanistan was what brought down the Soviet Union is still having an outsized effect on the thinker of many about this. (Despite that belief having only a dim relation to the actual history.)

But he’s also cautious about predict immediate shifts in the military position of the two sides in eastern Ukraine. What we’re seeing there right now is a lot like a frozen conflict but with no armistice agreement to go with it.

Notes:

(1) John Mearsheimer: Toward All-Out War With Both Russia & Iran. Glenn Diesen YouTube channel 05/18/2026. <https://youtu.be/Dx7osj5gCmo?si=8abfvzD2pjzazY-h> (Accessed: 2026-18-05).

(2) Melkozerova, Veronika (2026): Ukraine breaches Russia’s strongest air defenses to hit Moscow. Politico EU 05/18/2026. <https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-breaches-russia-strongest-air-defenses-drone-attack-hits-moscow/> (Accessed: 2026-18-05).

(3) Beale, Jonathan & Levchenko, Anastasiia (2025): 'Everything is finished': Ukrainian troops relive retreat from Kursk. BBC News 03/17/2025 <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0q198zyppqo> (Accessed: 2026-20-05).

(4) Was von Kursk geblieben ist. Tagesschau 08/11/2025. <https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/ein-jahr-kursk-ukraine-russland-100.html> (Accessed: 2025-20-05). My translation from German.

(5) Serim, Esra (2025): Drone technology and the future of nuclear weapons. The Loop (from the European Consortium for Political Research [ECPR] 07/23/2025. <https://theloop.ecpr.eu/advancing-drone-technology-and-the-future-of-nuclear-weapons/> (Accessed: 2025-20-05).

(6) Starchak, Maxim (2025): Ukraine’s Drone Attack on Russia’s Strategic Aviation Has Broader Implications. Carnegie Politika 06/10/2025. <https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2025/06/russia-nuclear-force-shuffle> (Accessed: 2025-20-05).

The US Revolution and the Enlightenment

I’m going back to the well here on the historian Henry Steele Commager’s treatment of the American Revolutionary era and the early Republic in the context of Enlightenment thought.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) famously defined the concept in a short essay called “What Is Enlightenment?”

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment. …

This enlightenment requires nothing but freedom--and the most innocent of all that may be called "freedom": freedom to make public use of one's reason in all matters. Now I hear the cry from all sides: "Do not argue!" The officer says: "Do not argue--drill!" The tax collector: "Do not argue--pay!" The pastor: "Do not argue--believe!" Only one ruler in the world says: "Argue as much as you please, but obey!" We find restrictions on freedom everywhere. But which restriction is harmful to enlightenment? Which restriction is innocent, and which advances enlightenment? I reply: the public use of one's reason must be free at all times, and this alone can bring enlightenment to mankind. (1)

This concept of the reason and right to self-determination of the individual was derived a concept of natural rights based on natural law. Natural law in the European philosophical tradition was originally based a Christian religious concept. John Locke, the English philosopher who was very influential in the thinking of political intellectuals in the US like Thomas Jefferson elaborated such an approach to inherent rights. But, as the quotation from Kant indicates, his concept did not involve individuals submitting their own thought to dictates from religious officials.

In fact, both David Hume (1711–1776) and Kant defined natural rights on a secular concept of Reason. (“Hume’s more conservative contemporaries denounced his writings as works of scepticism and atheism…”) (2) Divine beings were not a necessary component of the democratic and American Revolutionary concept, although most Americans and Brits in 1776 were adherents of some form of the Christian religion. (Locke, btw, did not think that recognition of inherent rights based on Christian natural law extended to Catholics.)

This past Saturday, the faithful followers of Donald Trump staged a “Freedom 250” event specifically title “Rededicate 250:” A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving on the National Mall in Washington celebrating the Christian heritage of the US, Protestant fundamentalist version. Katherine Stewart wrote before the event:

The Trump Freedom 250 program is embedded with unvarnished Christian nationalist propaganda. It kicks off with a rally on the National Mall called Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving, which bills itself as “part of the broader Freedom 250 initiative.” The event, hosted by a private foundation in partnership with the White House, has been described by proponents as “a major faith gathering” that will “bring together faith leaders, public servants, music, prayer, and testimony to honor God’s hand in America’s story.” In fact, it will bring together leaders and representatives of the narrow but powerful Christian nationalist groups dedicated to replacing American democracy with a (supposedly) Christian autocracy. [my emphasis] (3)

She also notes, “Talk about moneylenders in the temple: For about $1 million, they can secure invitations to a reception with President Trump.”

Commager on the Enlightenment and the American Revolution

Commager looked at the political philosophies and ideologies that dominated the Revolutionary period as being deeply influenced by the Enlightenment, which also included enthusiasm and even reverence for modern science, e.g., Benjamin Franklin. But Commager saw the historical writing of that generation as sadly deficient in comparison to the legal theories and political philosophies. He wrote, for instance, “Of all that generation only the grotesque Parson Weems [Mason Locke Weems, known for his tale of Washington and the cherry tree] wrote histories that survive, and everyone acknowledges that he was not really an historian at all and that he belongs to the era of Romanticism, not to the Enlightenment.” (Weems is best known as the popularizer of the tale of young Washington and the cherry tree.)

However, he argues that the real, substantive historical writing of the Founders’ generation was found in the official documents and political polemics of the time:

For the great historical writings of this generation, we turn to John Adams, Franklin, Paine, Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington, Madison, Wilson, Rush, and their associates among the Argonauts; and the great historical treatises are not formal histories but such works as The Defense of the Constitutions, Notes on Virginia, The Rights of Man, The Federalist Papers, James Wilson's Lectures on the Constitution, and similar statements.

But he characterizes the basic approach to history embodied in such documents, adnthe Enlightenment understand of history, as follows:

What is clear, at once, is that the generation of the Enlightenment, European and American alike, thought of history not as we customarily think of it, as the reconstruction of the past, but as a moral enterprise. Perhaps it was not history at all; let us call it philosophy and be done with it. ...

In America too, perhaps especially in America, it was morality that was important [in the writing of history], not facts; it was wisdom and justice, and virtue. Here is the eminent Dr. Rush urging the trustees of the new Dickinson College to exchange a set of the Journals of the House of Commons for books on mathematics. "It would distress me" he wrote, "to hear that a student at Dickinson College had ever wasted half an hour in examining even their title pages. He would find nothing in them but such things as a scholar and a gentleman should strive to forget."

1969, the year of the Commager lecture, was nearly six decades ago. Commager was an active supporter of the civil rights movement, an outspoken critic of McCarthyism, an opponent of the Vietnam War, and was very outspoken against the authoritarianism and lawlessness of Richard Nixon’s regime, which is probably the most proximate American model of the Trump 2.0 regime. All of those perspectives were ones for which he also looked to history to advocate for democratic “virtue” in his own time. It’s worth adding here that one of the most important figures in McCarthyism was his witch-hunt Committee’s chief counsel who later went on to become the top Mob lawyer in New York and the political mentor of Donald Trump.

He also notes that liberty and tyranny were early themes in the new American Republic. Although few people today would have trouble recognizing both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson as Founders whose actions and ideas deserved to be carefully understood, they became political enemies during the Adams Administration of 1777-1801. Jefferson and his partisans even regarded Jefferson’s Presidential election in 1800 as a second American resolution. A key point of dispute was the Adams Administration’s use of the Alien and Sedition Acts as an illegitimate excuse for political repression against critics of hist administration. It’s notable here that Trump used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as a key legal fig leaf for his deployment of the ICE Gestapo to terrorize and murder non-citizens and citizens as well in 2025-26.

Here it’s hard not to think of that apocryphal quote usually attributed to Mark Twain, “History doesn’t repeat itself. But it often rhymes.”

Commager may have overstated his argument (or maybe not!) that historical facts as such didn’t much matter in the Enlightenment thought of the American Revolutionary leaders and thinkers. But he conveyed a good since of how the past can be used to understanding and acting on the present. It’s similar to the New Left notion from the 1960s of a “usable past.” And Commager understood history in that way, though he wasn’t advocating disregarding the actual facts of history.

His essay is also a reminder that the approach to understanding history evolves, and there are fads and trends in the mainstream approach to teaching history and a lot of diverse perspectives. The Enlightenment was a complex and contradictory phenomenon, as reflected in the title and the text of Theodore Adorno’s and Max Horheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947). The Enlightenment was a key moment in defining and prioritizing basic human rights, including the secular grounding the Hume and Kant gave to it.

But Enlightenment thought also found justifications and alibis for colonialism and racism. There was a debate, for instance, between Kant’s concept of race which allowed for the notion of superior and inferior races, and the more egalitarian (and more scientifically accurate) view of the explorer and German revolutionary democrat Georg Forster (1754-1794). (5)

History is complicated. It’s also a moving target.

This is why it’s worth remembering the actual events and leaders and motivating ideas of period of the Revolution and the early Republic. Otherwise, there will be no shortage of religious and political crackpots pimping their own scam version of that history and heritage to the disadvantage of pretty much everyone.

Notes:

(1) What Is Enlightenment? English translation: Mary C. Smith, n/d. <https://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html> (Accessed: 2026-19-05).

(2) Morris, William Edward and Charlotte R. Brown (2023): David Hume. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 11/01/2023. <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2023/entries/hume/> (Accessed: 2026-19-05).

(3) Stewart, Katherine (2026): A Very Authoritarian Semiquincentennial Celebration. New Republic 05/15/2026. <https://newrepublic.com/article/210373/trump-america-250-corruption-authoritarianism> (Accessed: 2026-19-05).

(4) Commager, Henry Steele (1975): The Past As An Extension of the Present. In: Jefferson, Nationalism, and the Enlightenment. New York: Geoge Braziller. The essay was originally presented as an address in 1969.

(5) Strack, Thomas (1996): Philosophical Anthropology on the Eve of Biological Determinism: Immanuel Kant and Georg Forster on the Moral Qualities and Biological Characteristics of the Human Race. Central European History 29:3, 285-308. <http://www.jstor.com/stable/4546617>