Has the US-Israel War on Iran ended? (Hint: No)

The US-Israel War on Iran was a massive blunder for US foreign policy. Various commentators like Robert Pape are saying this may be the biggest US strategic defeat in the history of US foreign policy. Not in terms of lives lost, of course. But in terms of the failure to achieve the political goals of the war and in terms of a great increase in Iran strategic clout.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon discusses the current situation in an interview with Maddie Hale of The Trump Report. (1)

Dan Perry – optimistically assuming the war is now over – writes:

A war that began with immense ambition has ended with profound setbacks for both the United States and Israel.

With an emerging U.S.-Iran peace agreement, what initially appeared to be a historic demonstration of military dominance evolved into a vivid illustration of the limits of both Israeli and American power. The conflict also exposed profound failures in strategic competence within that alliance. Washington and Jerusalem planned effectively for the initial decapitation strikes, but were unprepared for the economic and geopolitical consequences that followed.

The result is a war that may ultimately strengthen the Iranian regime politically, despite the damage it suffered militarily; has weakened international perceptions of American military might; and has diminished both Israel’s own strategic circumstances and its most important alliance. [my emphasis] (2)

Israel remains a wild card in the war. Iran is demanding that Israel pull out of Lebanon and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is carrying on the conflict there. Netanyahu’s goal is to make Israel the undisputed hegemon in the Middle East that will have the freedom to periodically attack its neighboring countries: “mowing the grass” periodically, as Israel describes its many colonial military operations in Gaza.

The US and Israel have divergent goals here. Netanyahu’s government wants the US to continually support its military attacks on its neighbors including Iran. That is not in the US national interest. And the public opinion polls in this election year show broad public support in Israel for an even more aggressive policy against Iran and the Palestinians. The blatantly illegal and violent aggressions against Gaza and the West Bank are continuing, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians proceeds. So even if Netanyahu is not able to stay as Prime Minister after this year’s elections, there is no obvious immediate prospect that a new Israeli government would back away from the attempt to have the US continue to back an aggressive Israeli military policy against its neighbors and its colonial possession in Gaza and the West Bank.

Meanwhile, Trump just bizarrely suggested that he wanted the current Islamist government of Syria under former Al-Qaida and ISIS terrorist leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Zvi Bar'el explains what a ridiculous idea that is – though that certainly doesn’t guarantee that Trump and Netanyahu won’t give it a try. It’s a New York real estate negotiating approach to the Middle East:

The president of the United States, in a moment of honesty and based on his experience as a real estate entrepreneur, presented his new plan for solving the war in Lebanon. "If Israel can't do the job without killing everyone else, he'll do the job, Syria will do the job," Donald Trump said on Tuesday, referring to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, during a meeting with the Qatari prime minister at the G7 meeting in France.

"He's [al-Sharaa] very capable. And he's been very good for me. He's protected everything that I've asked for… And if Israel can't do the job without killing everyone else, he'll do the job."

That's how it is in a business where time is money. When a construction project takes too long to complete and results in too many houses being needlessly demolished, there's no choice but to replace the contractor. Israel should have been alert to the fact that Trump doesn't see eye to eye with it about the Lebanon theatre, which has rapidly turned from an Israeli battleground into a bargaining chip for Iran in a game Trump has already forfeited. [my emphasis] (3)

He also reminds us, “Lebanon is an inseparable part of the tangible guarantees Tehran is demanding as proof that the U.S. can meet its commitments.”

This war will not be over until there is actually a peace agreement that all relevant parties support. And it appears in the current political climate in Israel that the US will only be able to assure Israel’s compliance will be to credibly threaten them with a loss of US military support, which is only likely to be credible now if the US actually does seriously and visibly restrict that support, not just threaten it.

Is the current US President capable of managing the kind of international diplomatic moves that would be required to really establish a stable peace?

Also: Illy Pe’ery provides a description of the Israel army’s public-information efforts, aka, official propaganda:

[A]s a recent investigation by The Hottest Place in Hell revealed, the military does not limit these methods to the realm of “personal enrichment.” Between October 2023 and December 2024, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit conducted a psychological operation targeting both Israeli and international audiences, under the guise of a “non-profit news organization” specializing in “fact-checking” claims surrounding Israel’s war on Gaza.

As part of that operation, dozens of videos promoting the Israeli military’s talking points were published without proper disclosure, while influencers in Israel and abroad were recruited to amplify messages dictated directly by the military. What was exposed at the time as a discrete initiative now appears to be part of a broader, long-term effort by Israel’s defense establishment to institutionalize influence operations on a national - and even international - scale. [my emphasis] (4)

Notes:

(1) Perry, Dan (2026): The Iran war ended terribly for the US, and even worse for Israel. Pittsburg Jewish Chronicle 06/17/2026. <https://jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com/the-iran-war-ended-terribly-for-the-us-and-even-worse-for-israel/> (Accessed: 2026-18-06).

(2) Trump would be 'completely bonkers' to make this next move - Hamish de Bretton-Gordon. The Trump Report YouTube channel 06/17/2026. <https://youtu.be/vTUlEhn3dbY?si=_Ln7H55bbMuwCcSC> (Accessed: 2026-18-06).

(3) Bar’el, Zvi (2026): Trump Wants a New Contractor in the War on Hezbollah. Syria Doesn't Want the Job. Haaretz 06/18/2026. Gift link: <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-06-18/ty-article/.premium/trump-wants-a-new-contractor-in-the-war-on-hezbollah-syria-doesnt-want-the-job/0000019e-d7bf-d6a3-a5be-f7ff7ab30000?gift=1af2dbefa2984378890abeb5d6da4241> (Accessed: 2026-18-06).

(4) Pe’ery, Illy (2026): Revealed: Israel’s curriculum for ‘influencing public consciousness’. +972 Magazine 06/04/2026. <https://www.972mag.com/leaked-idf-propaganda-israel-intelligence/> (Accessed: 2026-18-06).

Early commentary on the latest memo-scheduled-to-be-signed event on the US-Israel War on Iran.

David Rothkopf was an editor and CEO of Foreign Policy magazine for several years. He does a podcast with two much younger reporters which give their commentary a kind of Grandpa-and-the-kids vibe that works well for them!

Here they talk about the proposed memorandum that would agree to work on setting up a deal between Iran and the US that may or may not still be on the table by the time this gets posted. (1)

Jeremy Scahill gives his take as of Monday on the latest memo-to-agree-to-talk-about-an-agreement. (2)

Notes:

(1) Peace in the Middle East...Maybe? The DSR Network YouTube channel 06/15/2026. <https://youtu.be/rXM0STBV8ZY?si=YJvPj3RLAFpU33l8> (Accessed: 2026-15-06).

(2) COMPLETE CAPITULATION': Jeremy Scahill Breaks Down Iran. YouTube channel 06/15/2026. <https://youtu.be/1kcBP3itmbM?si=CgUi1CQWUI8VXw2I> (Accessed: 2026-15-06).

Keeping our heads about war enthusiasm, Russia-Ukraine version

I’m genuinely surprised at some of the outspoken optimism of some of Ukraine’s most eager supporters in the commentariat.

The real issue practical issue right now as I understand it is, are Ukraine and Russia willing and able to make a long-term ceasefire agreement that freezes the current lines of occupation in place and addresses issues like prisoner-of-war exchanges and return of Ukrainian children kidnapped and sent into Russia?

If not, the most likely outcome is that the current war of attrition continues indefinitely. Russia’s occupation of one-fifth or so of Ukraine’s territory, Russia’s presumed (and clearly stated) goal of keeping Ukraine out of NATO is achieved for now. Since Trump has radically – and almost certainly permanently - undercut NATO’s reliability and Europe is scrambling to make collective-defense plans that do not rely on US participation, it’s understandable that European politicians and governments are stressing potential security issues with Russia. And, of course, companies that make huge profit margins on armaments have their own narrow incentives to promote a bogeyman of Russia as much as possible.

But neither unrealistic Russophobia or Russophilia – the latter at the moment most common among far-right parties (and some of them like Georgia Meloni’s ruling party in Italy are anti-Russia) – are conducive to realistic understanding of actual threats and opportunities. Reality does matter.

Ironically, the USSR and its Communist ideology are long gone, but the Western powers’ emphasis on ideology in its Cold War standoffs (and bouts of détente) with Moscow. Now Russia has a capitalist system with an authoritarian government based on rule through billionaire oligarchs – and Russia is still a favorite bogeyman. Trump’s weird admiration for Russia and Putin, whether it’s based on incompetence, corruption and/or blackmail – has not led to some more stable security arrangements or a resolution of the war with Ukraine. In fact, the last formal nuclear-arms-control agreement between the US and Russia expired under Trump 2.0. With no replacement, of course.

But when commentary and analysis become simple war boosterism, that can and often lead to real-world consequences. The Guardian’s Simon Tisdall often provides good analysis. But in a current column on the Russia-Ukraine war, he seems to get carried away by boosterism. (1)

Here’s a sample from just one paragraph:

“For Ukraine, the latest news is mostly good. Using sophisticated Ukrainian-made drones and missiles, it has forced the invaders on to the back foot.”

The front lines haven’t moved much from what it was by the end of 2023. But there does seem to be little question that Ukraine has been able to drone warfare with a notable measure of effectiveness.

“Russia’s tally of dead and wounded is said to be running to 30,000 each month.”

But the lines of engagement are largely unchanged. Russia also still has a volunteer army while Ukraine has been relying on draftees and is apparently having series difficulties with desertions. Russia does have large advantages in personnel and industrial capacity. However, Ukraine is fighting for what presumably most of its citizens consider to be its own territory and even its own national survival.

Ukrainian airstrikes deep into Russian territory are bringing the war home to a misled, disillusioned public.”

Yes, being bombed by an enemy country creates mass demands from the public of the country being bombed to immediately give up its war aims as has been shown by many examples since wartime bombing from airplanes began in the First Balkan War of 1912 including, uh, well … no examples. Because that has never happened.

“St Petersburg burns.“

Or, more precisely, Ukraine has made some attacks in Russia well behind the front lines. Whether those attacks have significantly reduced Russia’s warmaking capacity is very questionable. Also, this makes the limited strikes on Petersburg sound like the American firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945, which killed 80-100 thousand people. This is just silly.

“Fuel shortages cause panic buying. Prices and taxes are rising.“

Isn’t this happening pretty much everywhere thanks to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz?

“Putin’s 2022 ‘special military operation’, which was supposed to bring swift victory, has now lasted longer than the first world war.”

The First World War was a good deal bigger than the current Ukraine war, though it was also heavily a war of attrition.

Tisdall does give examples of he presents likely Russian provocations in NATO countries:

Russia’s offensive is becoming more physically aggressive, too. Armed drone and combat jet incursions into Nato airspace are multiplying. Thousands of GPS interference incidents, disrupting civilian aviation and maritime navigation, are blamed on Russia. Poland’s rail network, which supplies Ukraine, has been sabotaged. Germany and the UK have suffered similar attacks. Baltic undersea pipelines and internet cables have been cut. In this undeclared war, Norway’s land border with Russia, the North Sea and the North Atlantic approaches are emerging fronts.

The big problem with claims like this is that they are often based on partial information that is often not independently verifiable. The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in 2022, for instance, has still not been definitively clarified in the public record. And it’s very possible that the US and/or Ukraine sabotaged them, although the story involving Ukraine doing it has also struck me as dubious. (2)

Scott Lucas, who is a good political analyst and one I follow regularly, also seems to fall into boosterism in this clip title, “Can Ukraine Cut Off Russian-Occupied Crimea?” (3)

The podcast episode is titled, “Can Ukraine Cut Off Russian-Occupied Crimea?” Which also raises the question: Given Ukraine’s success with drone warfare, how much does “cutting off” Crimea do for Ukraine’s side in the current war of attrition? If Ukraine were able to take back their Kherson province, they would cut off Russia’s land access to Crimea through Kherson it currently has. It’s not clear what the advantage of prioritizing isolating the Crimean Peninsula would be at this time if that doesn’t directly include re-securing Ukrainian land connection to Crimea.

The hawkish-leaning Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) did a report in early 2025 about Russia sabotage in Europe that I wouldn’t dismiss out of hand. (Welcome to international politics!) Its opening paragraph claims:

Russia is engaged in an aggressive campaign of subversion and sabotage against European and U.S. targets, which complement Russia’s brutal conventional war in Ukraine. The number of Russian attacks in Europe nearly tripled between 2023 and 2024, after quadrupling between 2022 and 2023. Russia’s military intelligence service, the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (or GRU), was likely responsible for many of these attacks, either directly by their own officers or indirectly through recruited agents. The GRU and other Russian intelligence agencies frequently recruited local assets to plan and execute sabotage and subversion missions. Other operations relied on Russia’s “shadow fleet,” commercial ships used to circumvent Western sanctions, for undersea attacks. [my emphasis] (4)

Not to be overly cynical, but this kind of stuff goes at various levels between adversary powers all the time. It’s still very important to evaluate the specificity and reliability of reporting on such incidents, from Russia or any other international actors including the US.

It’s also important to be mindful of what is being described as “hybrid war.” For instance, one of the Russian “active measures” is “Undermining the democratic norms and values that underpin the West.” Against, welcome to international politics. And, yes, Trump and J.D. Vance engage in doing exactly that with their political allies in the anti-democracy “Nationalist International.”

Notes:

(1) Tisdall, Simon (2026): Russia is losing the war in Ukraine, and Putin is desperate. But that’s when he’s at his most dangerous. Guardian 06/14/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/14/vladimir-putin-ukraine-war-borders-russian-president> (Accessed: 2026-14-06).

(2) Walker, Shun & Cole, Deborah (2026): The Nord Stream riddle: echoes of mistrust ripple through Europe. Guardian 11/03/2025. <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/nov/03/the-nord-stream-riddle-echoes-of-mistrust-ripple-through-europe> (Accessed: 2026-14-06).

(3) Scott Lucas Worldview YouTube channel 06/14/2026. <https://youtu.be/izJkqpZC5Co?si=RwF_lHhnWQqV_GU4> (Accessed: 2026-14-06).

(4) Jones, Seth (2026): Russia’s Shadow War Against the West. CSIS 03/18/2025. <https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2025-03/250318_Jones_Russia_Shadow.pdf?VersionId=LHamL2L7HJwLgZ7a_wq6xkTIwMh3TFpk> (Accessed: 2026-14-06).

Navigating the Ukraine War narratives

John Mearsheimer talked about Russia and Europe in this interview with Tom Switzer. (1)

And among other things, he talks about how stereotypical Western images of Russia may be tempting some Western countries to indulge in threat inflation in thinking about the actual possible challenges from Russia, which also can fall prey to misleading stereotypes. And the temptation to start believing one’s own side’s hype about wars. As the investigative journalist Izzy Stone famously put it, “All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.”

In my previous post, I included a video of a lecture giving a staunchly conservative account of the Russian Civil war of 1918-20 by British historian Antony Beevor. It provides a good example of the kind of Western Russophobia that Mearsheimer often mentions.

At one point, Beevor refers to the “Asiatic savagery” displayed by both sides in the Civil War. Presumably this “Asiatic” quality includes Russians from both the European and Asian parts of the country. And I would guess that’s supposed to apply to Ukrainians. It’s less clear whether he’s suggesting that the British, French, American, Polish, Czech, and Slovakian participants involved also count as Asians in that characterization.

European leaders are stepping up try to fill the diplomatic space on the Russia-Ukraine War left by what has been essentially the collapse of normal diplomacy with Russia that we’re seen under the Trump 2.0 regime:

British, French and German ambassadors to Russia held talks Thursday in Russia's Foreign Ministry, several days after a London summit with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky. The United Kingdom hosted Zelensky and the leaders of France and Germany earlier this week, supporting Kyiv's call for direct talks with Russia to end more than four years of war. The envoys met with Russia's deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Galuzin. …

Russian President Vladimir Putin this month rejected Zelensky's offer for a face-to-face meeting to end the fighting. In London, the UK's Keir Starmer, France's Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Friedrich Merz said they supported Zelensky's proposal and that the current frontline should be a "starting point for negotiations." (2)

Ukraine’s supporters understandably indulge in some combination of optimism and standard war propaganda to make it sound like Russia’s willingness and/or ability to keep the war going is failing. But the front lines have scarcely changed in a long time. Part of the confusion is that Western governments and commentators tend to talk about Russia’s aim as being to conquer all of Ukraine. In fact, it looks like Russia right now is continuing to focus on holding the one-fifth or so of the Ukrainian territory they currently occupy. That gives them enormous leverage in blocking Ukraine from entering NATO or any other kind of formal military alliance with the current European NATO members.

Ukraine is still far from meeting the conditions to immediately become a full EU member. Ukraine benefits from the EU’s “Eastern Partnership” without becoming a full EU member. The EU Treaty also contains an explicit mutual-defense commitment. This hasn’t received a lot of attention, especially before 2025, because NATO had been the key (mostly) defensive alliance before Trump started making explicit threats to attack US allies like Denmark (Greenland) and Canada. But the Russians are unlikely in the foreseeable future to accept Ukrainian membership in an alliance with potential adversary European powers.

The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) – a reliably “establishment” group like its American counterpart – sponsored a poll among EU nations that “confirms the collapse in European faith in the US. Only 11% of respondents now consider it an ally, down from 16% half a year ago and 22% in November 2024. Meanwhile fully 25% see it as either a rival or an adversary.” (3)

Scott Lucas has been a good analyst on the Russia-Ukraine War and the US-Israeli War on Iran. But he sometimes seems to get a bit too enthusiastic about symbolic events, like the Russian cutback of its Victory Day Parade last month, which Lucas sees as a particularly important symbolic victory. He again cites that in this discussion with two Ukrainian journalists: (4)

I’m very skeptical about the usefulness from the Ukrainian attempts to use strikes deep inside Russia. It’s hard to imagine that Ukraine is seriously damaging Russia ability to wage war with those “strategic” attacks. My nonspecialist assumption is that concentrating on tactical strikes at the Russian forces occupying Ukrainian territory and those immediately near the Ukrainian border would be a more effective use of firepower.

In the real existing game of power politics in Europe, the EU countries and Britain do have to make calculations about potential military threats from Russia. That’s just a standard power-political consideration. John Feffer argues that Russia is not likely in practice to attempt any serious military aggression against current NATO countries like Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. That doesn’t mean their won’t be the occasional (non-combat) testing of air space defenses – which is pretty routine procedure – or sometimes a case where a drone “accidentally” crashes in one of those countries. As Feffer puts it:

Putin is not so dumb as to double down on his Ukrainian blunder by sending military forces into Poland or even the Baltic states. Cyberattacks and clandestine operations can be more effective since they don’t cross the threshold that mandates a NATO counterattack. Meanwhile, influence operations - disinformation campaigns, strategic political alliances, and the marketing of illiberalism - are even more effective in undermining the ideological underpinnings of the EU.

This latter campaign has more than double the impact when it’s mirrored on the Atlantic side by the actions of Trump, Vance, and Hegseth. (5)

Feffer’s article does not use the concept of “hybrid warfare” for those attempts at political interventions. It’s inevitable that terms like “propaganda war” pop up. But it is also very important to remember warfare is military conflict. It’s a current part of the politics of the parties and activist groups that are part of the Trumpist Nationalist International to claim that immigration is a type of hybrid warfare and an invasion. Democratic parties should be encouraging the use of that rhetoric, which is clearly xenophobic hate- and fear-mongering.

Notes:

(1) Why the war is not over - John Mearsheimer. Switzerland with Tom Switzer YouTube channel 06/12/2026. <https://www.youtube.com/live/xAspI4jxvWI?si=YFnX4Grk6tl2wYbz> (Accessed: 2026-12-06).

(2) Le Monde/AFP (2026): British, French and German envoys hold talks in Russian Foreign Ministry. 06/11/2026. <https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/06/11/british-french-and-german-envoys-hold-talks-in-russian-foreign-ministry_6754349_4.html> (Accessed: 2026-13-06).

(3) Kobzová, Jana & Zerka, Pawel (2026): Home alone: Europeans are ready to defend themselves. ECFR 06/10/2026. <https://ecfr.eu/publication/home-alone-europeans-are-ready-to-defend-themselves/> (Accessed: 2026-13-06).

(4) Crimea CUT OFF — Putin’s bridges ON FIRE! No FUEL at all. War & Politics 24 and Scott Lucas Worldview YouTube channel 06/12/2026. <https://youtu.be/P18bRWDUnyQ?si=eWYRE6GwPlbZMHBn> (Accessed: 2026-13-06).

(5) Feffer, John (2026): Pete Hegseth’s Invasions. Foreign Policy in Focus 06/10/2026. <https://fpif.org/pete-hegseths-invasions/> (Accessed: 2026-13-06).

War termination and the “will to fight”

The Bulwark is a bit hard to characterize. They have some decent content. I would describe it as taking a Never Trumper position while wishing they could just be straightforward neocon hawks. When they started up in 2019 they drew on a lot of the former writers from The Weekly Standard. Jennifer Rubin wrote about its founding in a 2010 column in which she noted some of the “familiar faces” there: professional warmonger Butcher’s Bill Kristol, Charlie Sykes, Jim Swift and Janathan Last. (1)

I’m all for Never Trumpists supporting pro-democracy Democrats. But it reminds me a bit of the post-World War II former-Communists-turned-rightwingers whose pitch was: “I used to be a horrible person who was ready to lie, steal, kill, and commit all sorts of treason, so now that I’ve switched sides you should put particular trust in what I say because now I’m a total Good Guy.”

The imagined virtuous pre-Trump Republican Party was led in the 1950s by Dwight Eisenhower, who had some bad ideas of his own but who was a raving left-liberal in comparison to the Trumpified Republican Party of 2026. The liberal/conservative divides in those days cut across Republican and Democratic Party lines. But that hasn’t been true for a long time, though of course there are still some occasional crossovers – more often Democrats finking out to support Republicans’ conservative positions. For example, Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema blocking Senate approval of the John L. Lewis Voting Rights Act in 2022.

But the heads of the Republican Party since Eisenhower have included segregation supporter Barry Goldwater, Dick Nixon, Gerald Ford who pardoned Dick Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Old Man Bush, Shrub Bush (with Dark Lord Dick Cheney in tow), and now Donald Trump. The road to Trumpism was paved by Watergate, the Nixon pardon, Reagan’s Iran-Contra caper (and the “October Surprise” deal with Iran in 1980, the “Gingrich Revolution” and the hysteria over the “Whitewater” pseudo-scandals.

Brynn Tannehill did a piece this week for The Bulwark that is basically a cheerleading pitch for the Ukrainians in the current war in the form of an all-you-Russians-bound-to-lose argument. The gist of her piece is this:

For years, casual and expert observers alike assumed that if one of the armies in Ukraine were to collapse—to suddenly lose the wherewithal to fight - it would be the Ukrainians. But now it seems more likely to be the Russians. And that’s no accident, as it appears the Ukrainians’ theory of victory is not that they will drive the Russians from their land in great, sweeping offensives like those of late 2022 but that they will break the Russian army’s back by attacking its logistics, its manpower, and its will to fight. [my emphasis] (2)

It’s worth remembering what the concept of “will to fight” means in the military context. In polemics over a particular war, it’s often used to mean something like patriotic fervor or enthusiasm in cheering for the home team.

It actually means something more specific and more prosaic. At some point in every war, One or both sides decide that continuing the war is more costly than ending it. That is not usually an unconditional surrender like Germany in the Second World War. And usually not the complete collapse or disintegration of one side’s government. It’s one or both sides deciding it’s not worth in lives, treasure, and/or territory to keep on with the war.

Whether that’s a good or bad decision, or whether it was made through an adequate decision-making process, are different questions. And while subjective support and enthusiasm for the war is part of those decisions, the will to fight in war is about conscious cost-benefit decisions on both sides. It’s not primarily about team spirit or personal grit.

Tannehill offers as a grand historical lesson that “history teaches that as long as a country has the will to continue to fight, it will find a way to do so until it either loses the will or fighting becomes materially impossible.” Those lessons that History teaches, though, often require a good bit of reflection and inspection to see what they are, much less how to apply them. Those two elements she names there are also not two distinct things. If fighting becomes materially impossible, one side can decide to go Masada and commit suicide rather than surrender. But those cases are real outliers in actual wars.

She offers four historical lessons as boosting her outlook that Ukraine has the advantage in the war and that the Russians are more likely to go soft and lose the “will to fight.”

One example: The German Army in 1918. Her quickie summary is this:

Exhausted and demoralized German troops faced hordes of fresh Americans who brought the industrial and agricultural capacity of the United States with them. After four fruitless years of fighting in France, German troops began surrendering at the Battle of Amiens in August 1918, believing that the war was lost, and the quickest way to end it and live was to capitulate.

This looks like a soft version of the infamous stab-in-the-back theory that wound up playing such a toxic role in the politics of Weimar Germany. The two main military leaders were Erich Ludendorrf and Paul von Hindenburg. They persuaded Kaiser Bill to flee Germany and hand the government over to the Social Democratic Party so they could make the SPD the scapegoats for their loss. The SPD leaders could have played their role more adroitly, but that’s a bigger story. Ludendorrf went on to participate Hitler’s failed 1923 “Beer Hall Putsch” in Munich. Hindenburg was elected as President of Germany and it was he who appointed Hitler as Chancellor in 1933.

The fact was that the German army and political leaders knew the war was lost and made a rational decision to surrender based on their military situation and prospects. How well the victorious allies handled the peace negotiations is a whole different story. But the surrender was not the result of treacherous commies wrecking the government as the stab-in-the-back theory framed it.

Second World War Burma Campaign

She uses the 1944 defeat of the Japanese army Burma (now Myanmar) as another example. This one seems an odd choice because her own description of it describes it as a defeat that different planning and execution by the Japanese Army might have averted. Not as a case where weak-willed, sissy leaders panicked and ran from a fight they could have won.

This was also a case in which Japan was fighting to retain its occupation of the British colony of Burma, not one that directly involved the Japanese homeland.

South Vietnamese Army in 1975

The United States was actively involved in the war of South Vietnam against the Communist government in the north. For ten years or more, depending on when you start the count. This was famously a situation in which the US won every battle and lost the war. Here she repeats the Republicans’ stab-in-the-back version of the war’s end for the US, which Henry Kissinger persuaded President Ford and the Republicans to set up. “Despite pleas from the South Vietnamese government, the United States refused to intervene. North Vietnamese troops retained the support of China and the Soviet Union.”

This is the concept of “will to fight” that Republican and neocon hawks favor. The folks at the fervently pro-war neocon think-tank, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) and likeminded hawks love the Munich Analogy, in which a feckless Neville Chamberlain had a testosterone contest with Adolf Hitler in their 1938 negotiations, and Chamberlain chickened out in the face of Hitler’s mighty macho presence. Sadly, this is the canonical version of the Munich story, which manages to miss pretty much everything important that made the Munich Agreement a bad deal. (3)

Another favorite testosterone tale is the one during the Cuban Missile Crisis at a critical moment when Secretary of State Dean Rusk said, “We’re eyeball-to-eyeball, and I think he other fellow just blinked.” That was a crisis that was resolved with creative and difficult diplomacy in the middle of a military standoff and dang near triggered a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union. It was not solved by a staring contest. And here the outcome was less a matter of the “will to fight” on either side buts rather of having the brains and the will to avoid a nuclear war. Fidel Castro was initially angry with the Soviet for pulling out the nuclear missiles, although he later conceded that it was a better outcome than what might have happened if it hadn’t been resolved in the way it was.

In the case of the Vietnam War, the Americans had the will to fight for years, even though it was a bad idea to enter the conflict directly in the way they did. In the end, after all those years of “winning,” they made the rational decision to stop stringing out their participation in a war they knew they had lost. (Neocon ideologues notwithstanding!) And the South Vietnamese leadership decided – whatever their testosterone levels - not to keep fighting in a war they were clearly losing and had no plausible path to avoiding that defeat. In the last sentence

Tannehill closing comment on Vietnam carefully concedes that the South Vietnamese regime never was able to convince its own people that it had the nationalist legitimacy that the regime in the North achieved – but she still blames the loss on wimpy, stab-in-the-back US Congressional Democrats.

Russian Army in 1917

The case she cites first of all is the strangest of her four examples. She kinda-sorta tries to make this another stab-in-the-back case, in this case the Bolsheviks being the backstabbers. In her account, Czar Nicholas was doing a bad job of running the war (which Imperial Germany had started), and so did the interim regime of Alexander Karensky. She says that the Kerensky Offensive of mid-1917, “Russian soldiers lost all faith and quit fighting en masse.”

But she (of course) blames Lenin’s new Communist government for this particular loss-of-will-to-fight. They agreed to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in December 1917, which surrendered “huge swaths of [Russia] land and people to the Germans and all but ending the war in the east.” Which is true.

But the new government then prosecuted the Civil War of 1918-20, which resulted in as many as 10 civilian lives lost in fighting and other side-effects of the war. The Civil War including fighting Ukraine, Poland and Czechoslovakians. There were also interventions by the Allies, including Britain, France, and the US, who wanted to force Russia back into the war against Germany – and were obviously not happy about having a Communist government in Russia. “As many as 10 million lives were lost as a result of the Russian Civil War.” (4)

The relevant point here is that Lenin’s government made big territorial concessions at Brest- Litovsk, not because of testosterone deficiencies in their leaders, but rather based on their assessment of what were the practical possibilities for keeping the revolutionary government in power and getting out of the war against Germany. The new Russian government pulled out of the Czarist government’s war based on a practical assessment of their military capabilities. But based on the experience of the Civil War, that was not because of psychological loss of their subjective “will to fight.”

Here is an hour-long documentary on the Russian Civil narrated by British military historian Antony Beevor provided by the Jerry Ford Presidential Foundation, so it’s safe to assume it’s not a leftie take on the situation. (See the cited Britannica article for a non-polemical version. (5)

Notes:

(1) Rubin, Jennifer (2019): A bulwark against Trump and Trumpism. Washington Post 01/08/2026. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/08/bulwark-against-trump-trumpianism/> (Accessed: 20026-10-06).

(2) Tannehill, Brynn (2026): What a Russian Army Collapse Might Look Like. The Bulwark 06/08/2026. <https://www.thebulwark.com/p/what-a-russian-army-collapse-might-look-like-ukraine-drones-logistics-war-ukraine-zelensky-putin> (Accessed: 2026-10-06).

(3) Jeffrey Record offers a very good, reality-based account in: The Specter of Munich: Reconsidering the Lessons of Appeasing Hitler (2007). Washington: Potomac Books.

(4) Britannica Editors (2026): Russian Civil War. Encyclopedia Britannica, 06/01/2026. <https://www.britannica.com/event/Russian-Civil-War> (Accessed:2026-11-06).

(5) Russia: Revolution and Civil War with Sir Antony Beevor. Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation YouTube channel 10/11/2026. <https://youtu.be/WbGz2x_v1ho?si=hF-CwNkQ9gKWhWgP> (Accessed:2026-11-06).

Zelenskyy’s new proposals for ceasefire talks with Russia

In the long and continuing Russia-Ukraine War, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently issued a new proposal for negotiations, proposing a face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin. (“Volodymyr” is the Ukrainian version of the “Russian Vladimir”.)

It’s not hard to imagine that both Vladimir’s are sick of the clown-show diplomacy of Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. Although it seems to have worked better for Putin’s purposes than for Zelenskyy’s. Still, ultra-amateur diplomacy is the last thing this situation needed. (Which is even more true for the current Iran War!)

The BBC summarizes the current position of the two countries on territorial issues:

Putin's longstanding position has been that Ukraine should withdraw from four regions largely occupied by Russia - Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia - and give up its efforts to join Nato.

Ukraine has ruled out ceding territory, saying it would embolden Russia to invade again, as it had in 2022 when it launched its full-scale war eight years after illegally annexing Crimea. (1)

And the BBC report notes:

Putin's longstanding position has been that Ukraine should withdraw from four regions largely occupied by Russia - Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia - and give up its efforts to join Nato.

Ukraine has ruled out ceding territory, saying it would embolden Russia to invade again, as it had in 2022 when it launched its full-scale war eight years after illegally annexing Crimea.

Ceasefire negotiations have stalled in recent months, while previous peace talks in Geneva, Abu Dhabi and Istanbul have failed.

It’s a bit surprising that the BBC report didn’t mention Crimea there. In current international law, Crimea (seized by Russia in 2014), Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are Ukraine’s territory. The Russia position that they have officially incorporated Crimea and parts of the other four oblasts into Russia proper is not valid in international law and has never been recognized by Ukraine as valid.

Oleksandr Kyselov, a left-leaning Ukrainian from the Donetsk oblast (province) and currently of Uppsala University in Sweden, provided a helpful context this past December for what geographical issues that would be involved in a settlement of the current war. He was reacting to a particular peace proposal put forward by Russia last November 21.

Precedents exist for lasting ceasefires even when underlying territorial claims remained unresolved - Cyprus since 1974, Korea since 1953, Kashmir since 1972. But Cyprus has United Nations peacekeepers and foreign troops on both sides. Korea has one of the world’s most militarized borders. Kashmir sees regular outbreaks of violence, prevented from full war only by nuclear deterrence. None offers templates for sustainable peace in Ukraine fitting the deals discussed. [my emphasis] (2)

The Crimea problem(s)

Crimea has the most important port for the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Russia’s involvement in Crimea is also not new. Russia officially annexed the peninsula 1783. The Crimean War of 1853-1856 was, as the name suggests, was a war with Britian and France against Russia over control of Crimea. Two Ukrainian experts, Alina Frolova and Stepan Yakymiak, write for the Carnegie Institute:

Moscow’s determination to dominate the Black Sea runs deep in its strategic culture.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of 2022 aimed not only to seize Ukrainian land but also to reimpose its dominance at sea. Its initial war plans foresaw a rapid occupation of Ukraine’s coastline, including the critical port cities of Odesa and Mykolaiv. If it had succeeded in that, Moscow would have been able to restore much of its Cold War-era control over the Black Sea, strangle Ukraine’s economy, and use control over the flow of food and energy for coercion. The world learned in 2022 that Ukraine is vital to global food security. Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports triggered a surge in grain prices, placing millions—particularly in Africa and the Middle East—at risk of hunger until a UN-brokered agreement, and later Ukraine’s military power, prompted Moscow to retreat. [my emphasis] (3)

But Russia’s ability to use Crimea to produce a military advantage in the Black Sea has also been inhibited by Ukrainian drones and missiles in the current war. So at the moment, Crimea is not a critical to Russia’s power position as it seemed before the war. But that does not mean that Russia is inclined to cede it back to Ukraine. The current state of drone technology may have far-reaching effects on naval strategies and types of vessels used.

Frolova’s and Yakymiak’s position doesn’t seem to anticipate a harmonious resolution of the Crimea issue anytime soon:

The only way to achieve lasting peace and security in the Black Sea, therefore, is to ensure that Russia’s naval capabilities are not just degraded temporarily but kept structurally paralyzed. …

Ukraine’s primary objective in the Black Sea, working alongside its partners, should be the preservation of the current balance of power. But consolidating this achievement demands long-term commitment: scaling up Ukraine’s maritime strike capacity, institutionalizing the support of its coalition of partners, and integrating Black Sea security into NATO and EU frameworks. In other words, the Black Sea will remain insecure until Russia’s fleet ceases to be able to function as an offensive force. That is the starting point from which any serious strategy must proceed.

I think it’s safe to say that if Russia’s leaders think that is the goal Western powers include Ukraine are pursuing, it could be a very long time before the control of Crimea is resolved in any way acceptable to both Ukraine and to Russia!

Türkiye is also a key player on Black Sea security matters and has also focused on restricting Russia naval power there. Countries bordering on the Black Sea include Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine (even without Crimea) Russia, Georgia, and Türkiye. So the Crimea issues involves much more than just Ukraine and Russia agreeing on new boundary markers.

2014 Black Sea Map from Encyclopedia Britannica:

The occupied eastern Ukrainian oblasts

Zelenskyy’s new offer for talks at least hints that there could be a longterm ceasefire like those Oleksandr Kyselov cites for Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. On the surface, there seems to be a lot to be said for such an arrangement. Although the three examples Kyselov cites involve frozen conflicts that have lasted since 1953, 1972 and 1974. So a settlement along those lines could mean in practice something that would look to those directly affected a lot like a permanent settlement. The example of China and Taiwan, divided since the end of the Second World War, is on an even longer timeline.

At the very least, a stable and protracted ceasefire could give both sides a chance to begin removing the massive number of landmines and other unexploded ordinance on both sides of the conflict lines there. It could also offer a chance to resolve the heartbreaking issues of the many Ukrainian children illegally deported by Russia, many of them given to Russian families for adoption. And it would allow war refugees to return to their homes if they want to do so – although in many cases their actual homes may no longer exist.

A key issue for Ukraine of their 50-meter-long “fortress belt” in Donetsk. A 2025 analysis from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) describes the importance of that part of Donetsk – still controlled by Ukraine – as a key defensive position for any new military drive on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv by Russian forces. The ISW report discusses them in the context of proposals Russia had on the table at the time of the report:

The surrender of the rest of Donetsk Oblast as the prerequisite of a ceasefire with no commitment to a final peace settlement ending the war would force Ukraine to abandon its "fortress belt," the main fortified defensive line in Donetsk Oblast since 2014, with no guarantee that fighting will not resume. Putin's reported proposal reportedly demands that Ukraine concede this critical defensive position, which Russian forces currently have no means of rapidly enveloping or penetrating, apparently in exchange for nothing. (4)

John Mearsheimer describes the current context of the war is that Russia is winning in the war of attrition and advancing slowly, but advancing. He doesn’t see much credibility in claims that Putin is facing critical challenges politically because of the Russian economy or claims that the occasional drone attacks by Ukraine deep inside Russia are putting huge new political pressure on Putin to end the war. (5)

Scott Lucas is a good analyst of American diplomacy and on Trump’s regime generally. But He’s a bit too starry-eyed on things like the Ukrainian strikes inside Russia. It’s not that Ukraine isn’t successful in hitting some strategic economic infrastructure targets. But it’s hard to imagine that those are having any large economic effect on Russia’s industrial capabilities, especially in comparison to using those attacks for tactical operations on the Russian forces on the border. But Lucas also comments that he thinks Zelenskyy is seeking a ceasefire in place now. (6)

At this stage, a prolonged ceasefire along the current front lines is likely the very best Ukraine can do. There’s a good argument that it also makes sense for Russia, and Mearsheimer gives the impression that there is some possibility to Putin’s government will see it that way. He recent suggest that Zelenskyy’s current optimistic rhetoric would be a good way for Zelenskyy to spin the results if Russia should agree to a stable ceasefire-in-place. But that would be a best-we-can-do type settlement from Ukraine’s viewpoint. And the Russian government may decide that maintaining something like the current position with sporadic rounds of fighting without a ceasefire is a preferable position.

The Ukraine-can’t-join-NATO demand is sounding a little obsolescent these days, since the European allies and even Canada are scrambling to find alternative military-defense commitments and arrangement now that they can no longer count on the US in anything like the way they could pre-2025. But if Putin wants to do a deal, he probably could convince Trump to make some kind of pledge that the US would veto any Ukrainian bid for membership.

Still, a firm agreement with he US on sanctions relief would be a likely thing for Russia to demand in a major ceasefire agreement. And that would require the US to conduct something more like actual diplomacy than the current Kushner-Witkoff Laurel-and-Hardy act.

Jared and Steve prepare for their next round of negotiations with Russia

Notes:

(1) Shevchenko, Mann, Toby (2026): Zelensky proposes face-to-face talks in open letter to Putin. BBC News 2026-05-06). <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy2ypyp4x4o> Accessed: 2026-09-04).

(2) Kyselov, Oleksandr (2025): Ukraine Faces an Imperial Carve-Up. Jacobin 2025-04-12. <https://jacobin.com/2025/12/ukraine-russia-war-concessions-trump> (Accessed : 2026-09-06).

(3) Frolova, Alina & Yakymiak, Stepan (2026): The Changing Military Balance in the Black Sea: A Ukrainian Perspective. Carnegie Institute 04/02/2026. <https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/research/2026/04/the-changing-military-balance-in-the-black-sea-a-ukrainian-perspective> (Accessed: 2026-09-06).

(4) Ukraine’s Fortress Belt in Donetsk Oblast ISW 12-Aug-2025. <https://understandingwar.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/The20Critical20Importance20of20UkraineE28099s20Fortress20Belt20in20Donetsk2C20August20122C2020252C20final20PDF.pdf> (Accessed: 2026-09-06).

(5) Prof. John Mearsheimer: Why Ukraine Will Lose. Judge Napolitano YouTube channel 06/09/2026. (5) <https://www.youtube.com/live/XtINoZon8as?si=4labuv1wjoCc5u4g> (Accessed: 2026-09-06).

(6) Why Ukraine's Show of Strength in St. Petersburg Matters. Scott Lucas Worldview YouTube channel06/09/2026. <https://youtu.be/iFOfGT-f1iQ?si=ZjJh0c90Qh4pTjnX> (Accessed: 2026-09-06).

The latest escalation in the Iran War

I’ve been around for several US wars. But at least from today’s perspective, it seems as if in earlier wars there was a plausible off-ramp that even Republicans could reasonably see as a plausible option.

In the current Iran War, the only option the US has to limit the growing catastrophe is to cut off all military aid to Israel until they agree to an enforceable peace treaty with Iran. And it seems completely unrealistic to expect the Republican Party to demand or even accept such a thing. And it seems at this point impossible to imagine the incompetent and seriously mentally impaired Donald Trump doing it as long as he’s President.

Another two and a half years of a Middle East policy of the kind we’ve had since Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu initiated their war of aggression against Iran on February 28 will have seriously catastrophic consequences for the entire world economy. And we’re now on the verge of having Middle East oil production capability radically reduced, with Saudi Arabia, Iran, and numerous other major oil producers looking at radical damage to their oil infrastructure.

We’re on the verge of things becoming so bad that even the chances for insider traders to reap weekly financial windfalls may be drastically curtailed. (Patrick Wintour, Guardian)

Israel launched airstrikes early on Monday targeting central and western Iran in response to missile fire from Tehran, attacks that threatened to drag the wider Middle East back into a regional war.

Iranian state TV reported the sound of explosions being heard in the cities of Isfahan, Karaj, Tabriz and Tehran. A witness in Tehran described hearing at least one large blast somewhere to the west of the capital.

Iran closed the airspace around Tehran’s Imam Khomeini international airport – the main airfield in the country – after the Israeli attack.

Multiple explosions were heard over Jerusalem later on Monday as Israel said a new wave of Iranian missiles was incoming. The Israeli military said it “identified missiles launched from Iran” and was working to intercept the threat. (Guardian)

Iran has said that any US or Israeli strikes on major Iranian oil infrastructure would be met with attacks against oil infrastructure of other US Middle East allies. They have also threatened to attack desalinization plants, which those countries depend upon for potable water. That would be a war crime on Iran’s part, but it doesn’t mean they want do it. Which could be seriously catastrophic for the countries affected. As David Michel wrote during the first month of the current war:

The economies of the Persian Gulf countries depend on oil and natural gas. Their populations depend on desalinated water. Nature endows the Arabian Peninsula with scant freshwater resources. Consequently, all of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations lining the Gulf’s southern shores critically rely on desalination plants drawing seawater from the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. The war on Iran that began on February 28 puts these essential water systems at risk. Desalination facilities in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) suffered indirect damage from missile and drone strikes early in the conflict. Subsequently, plants in Bahrain and Iran have reportedly been intentionally attacked. Deliberate targeting of desalination infrastructure would represent a significant conflict escalation, potentially threatening vital water supplies for millions of people across the region. (1)

On the American side, this mess is the result of years of the US Republican Party indulging the politics of crackpots and bigots like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

Reckless warmongering has left the world economy is a bad place, as Politico reports: (2)

Did the year 1989 actually happen, when it seemed practically possible to reduce preparations for wars and develop a much more peaceful world?

Simon Tisdall resorts to a sports analogy – which is at least better than talking about who “holds the cards”:

There are visionary statesmen and high-minded negotiators, pragmatic mediators and professional diplomats – and then there are meddling fools. As ceasefires implode, vast numbers of civilians die or flee, and wars Donald Trump started, fuelled or pledged to resolve rage unchecked, there’s no doubt which category he belongs to. In baseball parlance, in Ukraine, Iran-Lebanon and Israel-Palestine, Trump is “0 for 3”. He boasted he alone could cut deals and bring peace. He’s delivered neither. In striking out, he mostly makes matters worse. [my emphasis] (3)

If anyone is interested in seeing Trump’s Meet the Press meltdown from Sunday, it’s available on YouTube. Weirdly, it was held in a location where rain on the roof is very loud during the interview.

Notes:

(1) Michel, David (2026): Could Iran Disrupt the Gulf Countries’ Desalinated Water Supplies? CSIS 03/19/2026. <https://www.csis.org/analysis/could-iran-disrupt-gulf-countries-desalinated-water-supplies> (Accessed: 2026-08-06).

(2) Politico EU 06/05/2026. <https://www.politico.eu/article/global-shipping-industry-prepares-for-permanent-disruption/> (Accessed: 2026-08-06).

Tisdall, Simon (2026): Trump’s failure to maintain ceasefires is part of the new world disorder – and ordinary people pay the price. Guardian 06/07/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/07/donald-trump-ceasefire-failure-ukraine-iran-gaza-lebanon-gaza> (Accessed: 2026-08-06).

J.D. Vance and the Nationalist International, British edition

J.D. Vance, Vice President, Opus Dei supporter and fan of theocratic “Catholic integralism”, has joined in with British far rightists to use the stabbing death of a young British man named Henry Nowak to stoke xenophobia. Because that’s what rightwing demagogues do.

A Sikh man named Vickrum Digwa has already been convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Scott Lucas discusses this case and American Trumpists’ influence on far-right, anti-democracy British politicians and activists. (1)

Jamie Grierson reports on the case and its aftermath. From her report, it appears clear that a Sikh man named Vickrum Digwa fatally stabbed Nowak without justification in December 2025. And, as just mentioned, Digwa was found guiltry in a court trial of the murder.

Police arriving on the scene immediately after the stabbing, in a tragic and grotesque turn, arrested Nowak and ignored his stab wounds and basically let him bleed out in their custody.

After Digwa was jailed, Nowak’s father, Mark Nowak, condemned the “inhumane and degrading” treatment of his son by police, but said: “We do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension. We want his story to help make our streets safer for everyone.”

However, some high-profile rightwingers seized upon the case. Among them was Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform X, who posted repeatedly about Nowak’s treatment, including claims that official police policy required officers to be “racist against whites”. Musk also reposted commentary on the case from far-right agitators including the UK’s Tommy Robinson.

The US vice-president, JD Vance, claimed on Friday that mass migration was to blame for Nowak’s murder. He said Nowak would be alive “if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the west and the people who love it”. [my emphasis] (2)

This is another instance of the current Nationalist International of far-right parties and groups at work. The report also goes into a longer history of mutual British and American efforts to influence each others’ politics, including in the days of the original America First movement.

Grierson reports, “The Independent Office for Police Conduct, a watchdog that deals with police complaints and investigates deaths after police contact, is investigating how the police officers involved handled Nowak’s arrest. It is expected to report back in three months.“ But that hasn’t stopped wretched characters like J.D. Vance and Nigel Farage, the creepy head of Britain’s Reform UK party. Le Monde reports:

British leader Keir Starmer said on Wednesday, June 3, there was "no justification" for violence after protesters clashed with police in a demonstration against officers' handling of the murder of a white student by a Sikh man. The prime minister branded as "unforgivable" calls by hard-right firebrand Nigel Farage for people to respond with "pure cold rage" to the death of 18-year-old Henry Nowak – a murder that has become highly politicized in the UK. ...

Two people were arrested late on Tuesday during a protest led by far-right figures that turned violent, despite pleas from Nowak's father that his son's murder should not be used "to create further division, hatred or tension." Eleven police officers were injured during the demonstration in Southampton, which saw around 100 protesters pull apart garden fences, throw bricks, flares and chairs, and roll a flaming bin at police. Officers responded with a spray on demonstrators and hit them with riot shields. [my emphasis]

The British family singing group, the Marsh Family, who do brilliant satirical songs, has done one about Opus Dei Vance’s intervention in the politics of the case, “Bile and Lies”: (4)

A Greg Bovino footnote

Greg Bovino, until recently head of US Customs and Border Patrol (CPB), just attended a meeting of hard-right European nationalists and xenophobes. The idea of a “Nationalist International” is a bizarre concept. But there actually is such a thing in practice if not in name. (4)

Bovino in an interview before the conference called World War II German general Ernst Rommel one of his inspirations. Rommel is considered to have been a capable general, as shown by the number of British and American soldiers his forces killed.

Rommel was at least marginally involved in the 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler - which is now celebrated in Germany history as a patriotic and justified act of resistance - and Rommel committed suicide to avoid being arrested and executed after the attempt failed.

The intensive US bombing campaign against Iraq in 1998 was officially designated as "Operation Desert Fox", which was famously the nickname of Ernst Rommel. Whatever credit Rommel deserves for his part in the 1944 plot, naming an American military campaign after one of Hitler's most important generals was just bizarre.

Notes:

(1) J.D. Vance Exploits A Murder to Undermine UK Government. Scott Lucas Worldview YouTube channel 06/07/2026. <https://youtu.be/pigPXeFG04M?si=dI73FVzx7Bd3wYPI> (Accessed; 2026-07-06).

(2) Grierson, Jamie (2026): How Britain was rocked by Henry Nowak’s murder – and why the US intervened. Guardian 06/05/2026. (Accessed: 2026-07-06).

(3) UK PM slams violence outbreaks after footage shows dying stabbing victim handcuffed by police, Le Monde/AFP. <https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/06/03/outrage-grows-in-britain-after-footage-shows-dying-stabbing-victim-handcuffed-by-police_6754067_4.html> (Accessed; 2026-07-06).

(4) (3) "Bile and Lies" - Marsh Family parody of The Eagles "Lyin' Eyes" about JD Vance views on Henry Nowak. Marsh Family YouTube channel 06/06/2026. <https://youtu.be/2J95CTmZUUM?si=nMs49kxF0jQh0jEC> (Accessed; 2026-07-06).

(5) Far-Right Leaders, Including Ex-CBP Chief Greg Bovino, Convene in Portugal for "Remigration Summit." Democracy Now! YouTube channel 06/04/2026. <https://youtu.be/YJM7iLg1KFc?si=TU8EEUB1RtyjX8Up> (Accessed; 2026-07-06).

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).