Land Destroyer

American/Ukrainians Caught Arming Militants in Myanmar and the US Dirty War on China

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 04:22:00 -0700

March 20, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - India’s national media reported the arrest by Indian security services of US mercenary Matthew VanDyke and six Ukrainians for illegally crossing the border into neighboring Myanmar to provide military training to armed groups fighting Myanmar’s central government.

Indian security services have also linked the suspects to “importing huge consignments of drones from Europe to Myanmar via India” for “ethnic armed groups,” matching the established pattern of US proxy war waged around the globe throughout the 21st century.

The military support provided by groups like VanDyke’s “Sons of Liberty” and other US-linked organizations like former US Special Forces operator David Eubank’s “Free Burma Rangers,” together with overt US government funding and support for political opposition groups the US seeks to install into power, have fueled decades of conflict inside Southeast Asia’s nation of Myanmar.

US-Backed Militants in Myanmar

VanDyke has gravitated toward US wars and proxy wars of aggression around the globe including the US war on Libya in 2011, against Syria also in 2011, and in Ukraine from 2022 onward according to Western sources like Newsweek.

VanDyke’s recent operation in Myanmar involved not only training militants, but also equipping them with “huge consignments” of drones, indicating a significant source of funding. Because the funding is not disclosed by VanDyke’s “non-profit security contracting firm” it is very likely - as with all other aspects of Myanmar’s opposition - it is funded by the US government and simply laundered through fronts like VanDyke’s.

Other similarly US-backed operations training and equipping militants in Myanmar include David Eubank’s “Free Burma Rangers” (FBR). US diplomatic cables made available by Wikileaks revealed Eubank regularly reports to US government representatives at the US consulate in neighboring Thailand (here, here, here, here, and here).

While FBR poses as some sort of nongovernmental organization (NGO) which “assists ethnic resistance groups” with “humanitarian operations,” videos produced by Free Burma Rangers themselves and those by the militant groups they help train and equip, depict the organization providing military training (including weapons training), as well as FBR members themselves carrying weapons on patrol with local militants.

The political opposition these armed groups seek to install into power, the so-called “National Unity Government” (NUG) is itself a documented wholecloth creation of the US government.

In its earlier days it was referred to as the “National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma” (NCGUB) and was literally based in the US, just outside of Washington D.C. in Rockville, Maryland. A 2013 “The World” article would admit the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was the “main supporter of the NCGUB.”

The NED’s website indicated an extensive list of politically invasive programs it was funding, interfering in virtually every aspect of Myanmar’s internal political affairs - everything from supposed “human rights,” to media, the development of “youth leaders,” resource management, “political participation,” legal aid funds, election monitoring, labor, and information space.

The 2020 NED disclosure for Myanmar - still referred to by the NED by its British colonial nomenclature of “Burma” - focused extensively on targeting the specific ethnic groups among which the armed militants VanDyke, his Ukrainian counterparts, and other organizations like FBR have provided military support to.

The most recent iteration of the “NCGUB” is the NUG and is made up of mostly US government NED funding recipients.

For example, the NUG’s so-called “Minister of Foreign Affairs,” Zin Mar Aung, whose official NUG biography openly admits, “in 2012, she was awarded the International Women of Courage award by the United States Secretary of States,” and that she was a “fellow in the Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow of the National Endowment for Democracy program.”

Her profile on the NED’s official website also noted she “co-founded the Yangon School of Political Science, a NED-funded institution.”

In other words - the US government has a long documented history of both building up and attempting to maneuver into power the Myanmar political opposition throughout its various iterations up to and including the current “NUG” - which in turn openly presides over many of the armed groups fighting the central government.

While the US government doesn’t openly supply arms and other military support to the NUG’s militant wings, Americans and now Ukrainians fighting amid America’s multiple wars and proxy wars elsewhere, clearly serve as a vector through which the US government can do so covertly.

The violence these armed militants are carrying out also happen to specifically advance US geopolitical objectives in the region - not just in regards to undermining and attempting to topple Myanmar’s government, but in the encirclement, containment, and attempted toppling of China itself.

America’s Dirty War against Myanmar is a War Against China

Myanmar, which shares a border with both India and China, is a key partner of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). BRI infrastructure in Myanmar includes the Kyaukphyu deep sea part in Myanmar’s Rakhine State along the Bay of Bengal and the Sino-Myanmar Oil and Gas Pipelines.

Together, these projects allow hydrocarbons imported from abroad to be off-loaded along Myanmar’s coasts and piped across the country toward China’s Yunnan province along the Myanmar-Chinese border, thus by-passing the Strait of Malacca.

Not only does the port and pipelines save up to 5-6 days versus transiting the Strait of Malacca toward China’s own shores, it hedges Chinese energy imports against the threat of a US-imposed maritime blockade either at the Strait of Malacca itself or anywhere beyond it in the Asia-Pacific where tens of thousands of US forces are stationed specifically to encircle, contain, and if possible, cut off China.

Beijing’s concerns are far from “paranoia.” They are a direct reaction to decades-spanning US policies describing the implementation of a global maritime oil blockade on China specifically at the Strait of Malacca. These policies have driven the deployment of the US military forces into the region to potentially impose it as well as arms and force restructuring programs to better enable their ability to do so.

One such policy paper published by the US Naval War College Review in 2018 is literally titled, “A Maritime Oil Blockade Against China.” It introduced the concept of a “distant blockade” designed to reduce the threat of Chinese anti-access area-denial (A2AD) systems by being imposed just beyond the range of most of China’s military capabilities including “the Strait of Malacca and a handful of other passages that the US Navy could seal off effectively.”

The purpose of the “distant blockade” would be to impose crippling pressure on China to impede, arrest, or even reverse its economic development, in addition to other forms of military, technological, and economic pressure the US has already spent years applying.

The 2018 paper mentioned the Sino-Mayanmar Pipeline by name, explaining, “a distant blockade also would need to interdict the Myanmar–China oil pipeline,” and that, “the area could be declared an exclusion zone for the duration of a conflict, and if the Myanmar authorities failed to comply the facility could be disabled via air strikes, aerial mining, or other kinetic action.”

While the 2018 paper proposed a maritime oil blockade as a measure applied during an active conflict, the US has since used the armed militants it has backed in war against Myanmar’s central government for decades to begin carrying out attacks-by-proxy on the pipelines instead.

This has resulted in years of attacks killing security personnel guarding the pipelines, damaging equipment used to operate them, and at various periods of the ongoing conflict, US-backed militants taking over entire sections of the pipelines themselves including just last year.

Taken together with the recent US invasion and seizure of Venezuela’s government, drone strikes the New York Times admits are directed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deep inside Russia at its energy production, as well as the ongoing US war on Iran - all three nations counting China as their largest energy export partner - the US dirty war in Myanmar is just one of many fronts the US is waging a proxy war on China itself.

Not only is a “maritime oil blockade” being imposed on China, it is being imposed on China worldwide - from Latin America to the Middle East and Eurasia - much further beyond China’s military reach than a closure at the Malacca Strait would have been.

Myanmar’s military, supplied and supported by both Russia and China, has failed to restore peace and stability across the country specifically because of the hundreds of millions of dollars (or more) the US has spent over decades propping up proxy political forces and covertly arming their militant wings.

The recent arrest of American and Ukrainian citizens providing these militants with additional training and modern combat drone technology is not just a war against Myanmar’s central government and the peace and stability of the nation and people of Myanmar, but also a war against China and the peace and stability of the entire Asia-Pacific region - even the world.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

At the AI Race’s Finishing Line: A World of Abundance or Automated Dominance?

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 21:05:00 -0800

February 12, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance, an important but unnoticed debate is taking place within the halls of Western power and among a handful of billionaire business leaders and investors regarding the shape of the world to come as this technology permeates every aspect of modern civilization.

Western-based optimists insist that AI will bring about a utopian world of abundance, eliminating poverty, illness, and violence and insist that the US must win an intensifying AI race with China to do so.

Paradoxically, it is the US who has, in the past several decades - including throughout the entirety of the 21st century, perpetuated and even compounded existing poverty, illness, and violence stretching from Latin America to Central Asia and everywhere in between. The US has - in the past 26 years alone - invaded and destroyed entire nations, killing millions and displacing 10s of millions fleeing from the poverty, illness, and violence stemming from US-led war.

Even within US borders, these same interests have ravaged the American population through predatory economic practices prioritizing profit and power over any semblance of societal or civilizational purpose. This has manifested itself as rotting infrastructure, inaccessible healthcare, unaffordable education, and the growing dearth of opportunities emerging from a society systematically exploited and neglected rather than built-up and invested in.

For a Western-based billionaire - this reality may not be apparent because of the cocoon of luxury, comfort, and security immense wealth affords anyone, anywhere - but it is reality nonetheless.

China, on the other hand, has already spent the last several decades lifting hundreds of millions of its own people out of poverty, improving healthcare, and eradicating violent crime within its borders long before AI became a practical reality.

China Pursues Abundance, Cooperation, and Coexistence

Throughout the 21st century China has not invaded a single nation nor participated in the sort of unilateral economic sanctions the US and its partners have used to target scores of nations around the globe with the explicit purpose of crushing economies and dividing and destroying populations to in turn induce “regime change.”

Instead, China has continued to rapidly build out its own infrastructure while partnering with nations around the globe, long neglected under decades of Western domination, to build desperately needed modern infrastructure creating what China refers to as the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI).

Nations like Laos in Southeast Asia - upon which the US dropped more bombs during the Vietnam War than the nation's total population - received its first and only modern rail route thanks to China’s BRI - a high-speed rail line that has transformed the landlocked impoverished nation into a logistics and tourism corridor between China and the rest of Southeast Asia.

Neighboring Thailand has also greatly benefited from the rise of China in profound ways decades of “major non-NATO ally” status with the US failed to provide including expanding trade, tourism, manufacturing, infrastructure expansion, and technology transfers rapidly modernizing Thailand at a pace US-proxies in the region like the Philippines will likely never experience in the near or intermediate future.

Consumer costs for cars, computers, smartphones, and all other types of consumer and industrial electronics and equipment have plummeted across nations in Asia trading with China - empowering individuals, small businesses and large enterprises alike to do more, more quickly, and with less resources.

A visit to anywhere across Asia where Chinese-driven development has escaped US efforts to sabotage, stagnate, or reverse, reveals stunning progress at all levels of society, not just for a handful of billionaires.

Within China itself, government policy has focused on investing in the best interests of society even at the cost of maximizing profits. China’s network of high-speed rail lines is a perfect example of this. While the overall network turns a profit, there are entire lines that do not. These lines are maintained at a loss to contribute to the overall benefit of society and the economy in ways Western-style profit-driven market economics cannot and will not.

Chinese policies like the "Healthy China 2030" initiative seeks to invest in healthcare to deliberately extend the “health-span” of its citizens through bio-technology and active anti-aging research - mirroring the ambitions of Western-based billionaire AI optimists - but in ways Western governance and profit-driven market economics will never pursue because of the immense profits that exist for preying on and exploiting human health problems rather than permanently solving them.

Ironically, optimistic abundance-seeking billionaires in the West cheering for a US victory in the ongoing AI race, appear to have missed years of the US accusing China of “overcapacity” which should more honestly and accurately be called abundance - abundance the US has taken active measures to try to sabotage, stagnate, and even reverse.

Wall Street and Washington See Abundance as an Obstacle, Not an Objective

Toward this end, the US has pursued geopolitical policies aimed at encircling and containing China politically, economically, and even militarily.

The US maintains tens of thousands of troops closer to China than to America’s own shores and has used its political capture, domination, and even military occupation of nations like Japan and the Philippines as a means of projecting military power both directly and by proxy against China within Chinese territory and along essential sealanes required for Chinese commerce.

US policy papers explicitly lay out plans for maritime blockades, attacking the Chinese BRI including through military strikes, and mitigating Russia’s ability to supply energy to China across their long, shared border - all as a means of economically strangling China.

Since (and even long before) such papers were published, the US has actively executed these policies including by reorganizing the US Marine Corps specifically into an anti-shipping force for implementing a maritime blockade in the Asia-Pacific region, by arming and backing militants both in Myanmar and Pakistan to physically attack Chinese BRI projects and to maim or kill both the Chinese engineers working on them and local security forces trying to protect them.

Regarding Russia’s long shared border with China and the immense and growing amount of energy exports crossing over into China, the US has admittedly been conducting long-range drone strikes on Russian energy production deep inside Russian territory as well as maritime drone strikes on Russian energy exports - all as part of crippling Russia’s ability to sustain its own economic stability and that of importers dependent on its energy production and exports - especially China.

Spanning multiple US presidential administrations regardless of political party affiliation - concerted efforts have been made to constrain Chinese technological development including through import bans on Chinese technology to cripple companies like Huawei, and through export bans on semiconductors and equipment used to manufacture them - both as a means of hobbling Chinese technological development overall, but specifically to hinder China amid the current US-China AI race.

And much more obvious than all of these actions are the words of the US government itself - in its own 2025, “America’s AI Action Plan,” the very first page declares the US must win the AI race to, “achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance.”

This is the very same “unchallenged global technological dominance” the US has squandered and exploited, cutting its swath of death and destruction from Latin America to Central Asia and everywhere in between throughout this 21st century alone - in stark contrast to China which has instead chosen to cooperate, construct, and coexist with the world around it.

The US has in both words and actions demonstrated that it pursues AI as a means of enhancing its already demonstrated desire for domination over the planet - a desire that sees abundance for all as an obstacle rather than an objective.

China has already committed to a national and global model of abundance and is tangibly leveraging AI to enhance this model - so much so the US has openly targeted Chinese-driven abundance as “overcapacity” that needs to be stamped out.

Western Optimism and Cognitive Bias

For Western-based billionaire optimists insisting the US must win the AI race based on US talking points about Chinese “authoritarianism” and the Chinese “surveillance state,” in between praising the advent of cameras on American university campuses for driving down crime, or eagerly awaiting upcoming Apple products like its “AI pin” that records every conversation wearers have demonstrates profound cognitive bias.

It is not that these optimists have operated from first principles to arrive at their conclusions objectively - but instead have applied their cognitive bias to a desired outcome that reflects them. They are Westerners, therefore the West should “win” the AI race - even if it comes at the expense of advocating for a system that uses emerging AI technology to maintain a crumbling status quo over one that is clearly using it as the scaffolding for a highly efficient, rapidly developing society.

For those who objectively seek a future of abundance and the use of rapidly developing AI to shape it, they must align themselves with those who have been and are currently - and very deliberately - pursuing abundance now.

Investing in and supporting those who are openly and aggressively trying to vilify and stamp out abundance in the hope that - upon arriving at artificial superintelligence - their sentiments suddenly shift toward utilizing it for universal abundance rather than establishing a future of automated domination - is perhaps the greatest example of how wealth and influence does not translate into intelligence or good judgement.

For the rest of the world, it is important to understand that AI is here, is rapidly advancing, and is not going to be “paused,” “uninvented,” or waved away by denying it exists. The only question that remains is in whose hands will this tremendous power fall and what will be done with it.

If we desire a future of universal abundance over one of automated domination, we need to see how the AI race fits into the greater struggle unfolding between Wall Street and Washington’s pursuit of a unipolar world order and its war on the emerging multipolar world and how it seeks to use AI as a “force multiplier” to do so.

Only time will tell how this race ends - but experts on all sides agree that time is short and that this matter will be settled in the matter of years, not decades. If this is true, every day counts and that the time to debate and determine the future of AI and the world it will create must begin today.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

US Consolidates Control Over Proxies Amid War on Multipolarism

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Mon, 9 Feb 2026 21:13:00 -0800

February 2, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Behind the political theater that is the “US-European split,” exists an aggressive campaign of US consolidation over its many proxies - including and perhaps especially over Europe itself.

Narratives floating through Western media space depict the US as challenging or threatening not only Europe over control of Denmark’s Greenland territory, but also Canada in North America. Articles are written telling tales of Europe and Canada seeking leverage against Washington and countermeasures to protect themselves and their interests up to and including preparations for “guerrilla warfare” against potentially invading American forces.

In reality, nothing of the sort will take place.

Already, opportunities for gaining actual leverage against the United States have been eagerly surrendered to the United States, particularly with the recent decision by the EU for a “complete ban on Russian gas imports by 2027.”

The ban means the EU will completely eliminate any alternative to its growing dependence on US LNG imports leaving the US with disproportionate leverage over the EU as a whole and its members individually regarding virtually any matter of foreign or even domestic policy. It is inconceivable that the EU’s leadership would surrender such leverage to the US amid a supposed and growing “split” with the US unless of course there was no real split to begin with.

A Matter of Perception Management

Instead, what is unfolding is perception management meant to shape both the American and wider Western public ahead of implementing the publicly declared “division of labor” and “burden-sharing network” announced by the Trump administration and already taking shape during the previous Biden administration.

It was under the Biden administration that the first National Defense Industrial Strategy was published - admitting to the US’ failure to match Russian let alone Chinese military industrial production and the necessity for the United States to consolidate control over its vast network of “allies and partners,” combining their collective resources, industrial capacity, and military power to confront Russia and China’s growing power across all relevant domains.

Under a section titled, “Engage Allies and Partners to Expand Global Defense Production and

Increase Supply Chain Resilience,” the Biden-era paper noted:

“The global activity of pacing threats increasingly requires a global approach to defense industrial relationships, concerns, and competition. International allies and partners, each with their own robust defense industries, will continue to be a cornerstone of the DoD’s concept of Integrated Deterrence. Indeed, the global system of alliances and partnerships is central to the NDS, which calls to incorporate allies and partners at every stage of defense planning. Such linkages and relationships will continue to be a cornerstone of Integrated Deterrence in resisting and, if necessary, defeating known and emerging threats.”

The paper also noted:

“The United States has a complex web of friend-shoring-suitable alliances and partnerships around the world; a partial list includes Australia, Canada, the European Union, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.”

The paper defines “friend-shoring” as, “a process that engages allies and partners in production and processing of critical and strategic materials and supplies.”

The concept of the US exploiting its “web” of “friend-shoring” partners to compensate for the US’ own limits regarding military industrial production and to serve as an extension of America’s own military power has been continued - even accelerated - during the subsequent Trump administration.

In a February 2025 directive US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered to Europe in Brussels, he made it clear that Europe in particular would have to increase defense spending from 2% of each member nation’s GDP to 5% which all European nations have subsequently agreed to do.

Secretary Hegseth also demanded Europe prepare troops for deployment to Ukraine to ensure any freeze in the fighting would be made permanent, and noted that Europe must donate "more ammunition and equipment,” and expand its defense industrial base - again - all steps Europe has since taken despite claims of a growing “US-European split.”

Finally, Secretary Hegseth made clear that the US was not abandoning Europe amid its own proxy war on Russia, but rather establishing a “division of labor that maximizes our comparative advantages in Europe and the Pacific respectively,” admitting that the US must prioritize China in the “Indo-Pacific,” “recognizing the reality of scarcity” in terms of the US confronting both Russia and China at the same time.

Toward the end of the same year the Trump administration published its “National Security Strategy” which included an entire section titled, “Burden-Sharing and Burden-Shifting,” highlighting the necessity of using US “allies and partners” to add to America’s own limited power.

The document stated:

“…the United States will organize a burden-sharing network, with our government as convener and supporter. This approach ensures that burdens are shared and that all such efforts benefit from broader legitimacy. The model will be targeted partnerships that use economic tools to align incentives, share burdens with like-minded allies, and insist on reforms that anchor long-term stability. This strategic clarity will allow the United States to counter hostile and subversive influences efficiently while avoiding the overextension and diffuse focus that undermined past efforts. “

What this “burden-sharing network” represents is the US’ use of subordinated nations and regions as an extension of its own military, economic, and industrial power, pursuing foreign policy objectives at the cost of these nations and regions.

This has already manifested itself as joint arms production or expanding joint arms production schemes where nations like Germany and Japan have been or will begin mass producing US-designed weapons like the Patriot missile air defense system and munitions for US-made multiple launch rocket systems to compensate for the US’ own inability to sufficiently expand military industrial production at home.

Japan, which has manufactured Patriot missiles on a relatively small scale since 2008, more recently doubled production and has even begun exporting these missiles back to the United States starting in 2024 in direct response to limits in US military industrial production exposed in the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine.

Since the Trump administration took office, attempts to rapidly accelerate this process of consolidation has included proposals to radically rewrite both US laws and those of its “allies,” as well as openly expressing a desire to outright seize territory (Greenland, Venezuela) and facilities (ports near the Panama Canal) deemed necessary for the explicit purpose of confronting both China and Russia.

An April 2025 CNN article noted US interest in using South Korean shipyards to build and repair US warships because US shipbuilding and repair capacity has drastically decreased over decades and is incapable of closing the gap on its own with China - as pointed out in the Biden-era National Defense Industrial Strategy paper.

The CNN article pointed out that South Korean shipyards were already repairing US warships “in theater,” meaning in Asia-Pacific where the US seeks to encircle and contain China. The same article mentioned the necessity of changing current US laws prohibiting foreign nations (like South Korea) from building US warships the US itself is not and will not be capable of building itself.

Nations like Japan and the Philippines are circumventing their own laws to allow both a wider US military presence within their territory as well as for their own military forces to play a more integrated and active role in advancing US foreign policy in terms of confronting and containing China in the region.

Of course, by doing so, both nations are undermining regional stability required for their own peace and prosperity as well as their own respective relationships with China itself - both nations counting China among their largest, most important trading partners.

And now Europe is preparing to surrender itself into similar receivership to be used to advance US foreign policy objectives at Europe’s expense, and to a much greater degree than it already has between 2014 and today regarding the ongoing US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

Already, Europe has played a role in the US proxy war on Russia as well as in the US’ ongoing policy of encircling and containing China - both through direct measures taken against Russia and China, as well as assisting the US in political interference, proxy war, and the political capture and dismemberment of nations working together with Russia and China.

Europe’s participation in these US policies has left the region itself in terminal decline - with its collective industry collapsing because of rising energy costs, collapsing social programs as greater sums of public funding are diverted to underwriting Washington’s proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, and the possible collapse of Europe itself as the prospect of a direct confrontation between Europe and Russia is increasingly presented to the European public as both a necessity and an inevitability.

Ukraine itself is a microcosm of this wider “burden sharing network” in which US proxies are compelled to abandon their own objective best interests in favor of serving US interests at their own expense. Ukraine’s political system was violently overthrown by the US in 2014 and replaced by a US client regime for the sole purpose of transforming Ukraine into a battering ram to be used against neighboring Russia.

Regarding wider Europe, over the decades following WW2, the US has politically captured the continent, replacing national centers of political and economic power with the regional bureaucracy of the European Union, overriding the best interests of the European people regionally and collectively in service of advancing US special interests. This includes everything from waging wars of aggression alongside the US within Europe (Serbia and now Ukraine) and far beyond it (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria) - to subordinating and even sacrificing its economic wealth to isolate and cripple the economies of targeted nations ranging from Iraq and Iran to more recently Russia and China.

While explanations for the EU leadership’s behavior have dwelled on ideological or political obsession or a recent divide between a “conservative” US administration and a “liberal” EU political order - the answer is far simpler. Just as is the case for Ukraine specifically - where a US-installed client regime was placed in power solely to serve US interests at whatever the cost to Ukraine - Europe in general has been consolidated under the EU for the very same purpose. EU leadership has been placed into power, shaped, and directed by the same US-based special interests that likewise drive American foreign and domestic policy regardless of the cost to the average American citizen.

Even as EU leadership sells a narrative of a widening “US-European split” to justify the transfer or greater percentages of public funding for what is entirely Washington’s proxy war on Russia, it continues to consolidate power over its individual member states for the sole purpose of transferring this power to and in service of US interests - the ban on Russian gas imports only one of many recent examples.

Until a greater percentage of journalists, analysts, and the general public can strip away the political theater used to perpetuate this continuity of agenda and reduce analysis to its material realities - revealing the simple structure of what is modern American empire at work - this destructive process will continue to erode and destroy both members of the multipolar world and the West itself.

Only time will tell whether or not the multipolar world can expose this process for what it is and propose a more compelling vision of a collective future for the world - and in the meantime - defend itself and its aspiring members from the global war Wall Street and Washington is waging - and now expanding - against the multipolar world.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

Washington’s War on Iran: The Importance of Defending Information Space

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Mon, 9 Feb 2026 21:11:00 -0800

January 15, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The US has demonstrably continued its war on Iran through the execution of long-laid plans aimed at destabilizing the nation through US-backed protests and armed terrorists targeting major cities over the course of several days.

This follows a nearly 2 week-long war the US and its Israeli proxies launched against Iran in mid-2025 - only having been placed on pause ahead of the next round of destabilization and military aggression which appears to be unfolding now.

Amid the US-organized unrest in January 2026, the US has openly backed the opposition calling for armed militants to continue their operations and to even seize government institutions.

Associated Press would quote the US president as saying, “keep protesting and take over your institutions if you can,” and that, “help is on the way,” in reference to previous threats of US military strikes on Iran in support of the opposition.

Beyond rhetorical support, evidence of direct US involvement began to surface amid Western media reports.

The BBC in a recent article admitted - buried deep in the report - that “security forces have also been killed,” implying heavily armed elements amid the so-called “protests.” The same article admitted that informants contacting the BBC from within Iran were using “Starlink” satellite connections - referring to US-based SpaceX’s satellite communication network.

This comes as no surprise. As early as 2022, CNN reported that, “the White House has engaged in talks with Elon Musk about the possibility of setting up SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink inside Iran,” as one of several ways to “support the Iranian protest movement."

More recently, Forbes has admitted, “tens of thousands of Starlink units are operating inside Iran,” a metric of how aggressively the Biden administration-era initiative was executed and then continued under the subsequent Trump administration.

Beyond continuity of agenda between the supposedly “opposing” presidential administrations, plans to back violent unrest inside Iran have been laid out by US policymakers as early as 2009 in the Brookings Institution paper, “Which Path to Persia?” and seamlessly carried out by each successive administration regardless of political affiliation or campaign rhetoric.

The paper contains entire chapters titled, “The Velvet Revolution: Supporting a Popular Uprising” and “Inspiring an Insurgency: Supporting Iranian Minority and Opposition Groups,” as well as a chapter literally titled, “Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike,” in which it stated, “the United States would encourage—and perhaps even assist—the Israelis in conducting the strikes themselves, in the expectation that both international criticism and Iranian retaliation would be deflected away from the United States and onto Israel,” a scenario that would unfold verbatim mid-last year.

Regarding US-engineered unrest, the 2009 paper proposes using US State Department-listed Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) including the Mujahedin-eKhalq (MEK) the paper admits is highly unpopular inside Iran, had killed American citizens and military personnel in the 1970s, and has most certainly carried out terrorism against others since, but that it should be removed from the US FTO list in order for the US to provide greater and more open support.

In 2012, MEK was delisted under the Obama administration after years of lobbying from neoconservatives who would later line President Donald Trump’s first administration.

In regards to other groups now involved in unrest inside Iran, the 2009 paper stated, “the United States could opt to work primarily with various unhappy Iranian ethnic groups (Kurds, Baluch, Arabs, and so on) who have fought the regime at various periods since the revolution. A coalition of ethnic opposition movements, particularly if combined with dissident Persians, would pose a serious threat to regime stability. In addition, the unrest the groups themselves create could weaken the regime at home.”

This is now precisely what is taking place inside Iran today.

Despite preparations for both internal subversion and direct US military strikes on Iran spanning not only the Biden-Trump administrations, but going as far back as the Bush Jr. and Obama administrations, Iran has weathered these attempts for years and appears to have been at least partially prepared for the most recent round of US-engineered unrest.

The above-cited Forbes article reported Iran successfully shut down not only internet services US-backed militants were using to coordinate their actions and communicate with their foreign sponsors, but also managed to extensively jam Starlink terminals in critical regions.

The same article speculated that Iran’s success may be owed to the transfer of Russian electronic warfare capabilities perfected in the US proxy war taking place in Ukraine where Starlink has also been extensively used.

These developments highlight the priority of securing and defending national information space - space that in the 21st century constitutes as critical a national security domain as a nation’s airspace, land borders, and shores. Failure to do so has proven catastrophic.

US Weaponization of Information Space in the 21st Century

Throughout the 21st century, the US has deliberately and maliciously weaponized its domination over global information space, specifically through US-based social media platforms like X (formally Twitter), Meta/Facebook, YouTube, Google, Instagram, and many others.

As early as 2011 the New York Times admitted the so-called “Arab Spring” was in fact a long-planned and prepared for regional destabilization campaign organized by the US government and its partners across big-tech.

Its article, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” would admit, “a number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington, according to interviews in recent weeks and American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.”

The article also admitted that a number of the opposition groups involved attended, “a 2008 technology meeting in New York, where they were taught to use social networking and mobile technologies to promote democracy. Among those sponsoring the meeting were Facebook, Google, MTV, Columbia Law School and the State Department.”

In fact, this “technology meeting” was held annually for several years and built on the experience the US government obtained from similar political interference aimed at nations like Serbia, Georgia, Belarus, and Ukraine between 2000-2004.

The Guardian in 2004 would admit that ongoing protests in Kiev at the time were, “an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.”

It also admitted that, “the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box. Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze. Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko,” which the article admitted failed.

Thus, from 2000-2004 the US attempted serial overthrows of targeted governments across Eastern Europe, in 2011 the US refined these techniques to burn to the ground much of the Arab World, then successfully overthrew and plunged the nation of Ukraine into destruction-by-proxy war from 2014 onward, while last year overthrew the government of Nepal on China’s borders, and is now openly attempting to use these same tactics coupled with the threat of overt military aggression to topple the Iranian government.

While analysts have documented the growing disparity between the US and both Russia and China’s military industrial power, the US has retained almost uncontested dominance over global information space. Looking at the swath of destabilization, death, and destruction the US has cut from North Africa to Asia and everywhere in between throughout the 21st century, it has more than compensated for its lack of military industrial production. US information dominance has proven as much, if not more of a threat to the world than America’s still formidable military menace.

The US Threat to Global Information Space Requires Global Defense

The nations of Russia and China have - over the course of many years and through extensive work - secured their respective information space. This has - in turn - allowed both nations to secure and stabilize their political space providing the social harmony required to not only survive ongoing attempts by the US to encircle and contain both global powers, but in many instances to thrive.

This has been achieved through the creation of domestic alternatives to the US-based social media platforms that otherwise dominate global information space. Both nations have online networks that can be disconnected from Western-influenced information space when and if necessary.

Beyond this, both nations have created domestic pipelines ensuring crucial human resources such as programmers and technicians required to maintain the physical infrastructure of their information space are trained in-country and with the nation’s best interests in mind, as well as the media personnel, government officials, and other civil servants who use each nation’s information space.

This is not unlike the physical infrastructure built within any sovereign nation. Roads, rail, airports, and seaports are all acknowledged to be integral to national security and thus their construction, maintenance, use, and protection are determined accordingly.

Unfortunately, many policymakers across the planet have yet to understand that information space in the 21st century is as important - if not more so - than this physical infrastructure or traditional national security domains.

Allowing the US to not only provide US-based social media platforms to nations rather than nations developing their own, but allowing the US to also control the flow of information and thus ideas and consensus on these platforms is as bad, or worse, than allowing foreign interests to control a nation’s physical borders, infrastructure, and even a nation’s own citizenry.

The cost of surrendering a key - if not the key - domain of national security to the United States is political infiltration, capture, and even complete collapse as admitted US operations spanning the 21st century from Europe to the Arab World to Asia and back again have sufficiently demonstrated.

While the multipolar world joins to discuss cooperation across the traditional spheres of national security, urgent attention to securing of the globe’s information space from US influence and control is required.

Russia and China - which export weapons to help partner nations defend their traditional domains of national security - could export turnkey domestic alternatives to US social media platforms, physical infrastructure and gateways as well as electronic warfare equipment to defend against the sort of interference the US just executed across Iranian information space, as well as opportunities to link domestic social media platforms to multipolar alternatives to US-based X, YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms.

Iran, a nation with significant conventional military power, has been undermined and weakened because of its delay in securing its information space and thus political space sufficiently from foreign interference. And while it has acted decisively in recent weeks (and appears to have prepared at least months in advance) only time will tell if it is just in time or still too late.

The future of the multipolar world may depend not on how large the disparity is between it and the US hegemony in terms of traditional military power, but how quickly the rest of the world realizes the importance of controlling information space the US has understood and exploited across the entirety of the 21st century.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

US War on Venezuela is a War on the Multipolar World

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 01:08:00 -0800

January 13, 2026 - (Beijing Review - Brian Berletic) - In brazen violation of international law and abandonment of even the illusion of legitimacy, the United States has launched a war of aggression against the Latin American nation of Venezuela. The operation included missile strikes and the bombing of targets across the country as well as the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by US forces who have since delivered him to New York where he is being put through a show trial.

This attack represents the culmination of a decades-long project aimed at dismantling Venezuela, reasserting Washington’s hegemony over the Western Hemisphere, all while escalating its war against emerging multipolarism worldwide.

Drugs as “Weapons of Mass Destruction”

The justification provided by the Trump administration for military intervention centers on President Maduro as “the kingpin of a vast criminal network responsible for trafficking colossal amounts of deadly and illicit drugs into the United States.”

US President Donald Trump has gone so far as to equate drug trafficking to "weapons of mass destruction," recycling the same false pretext used to sell the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the American and global public.

However, Washington’s own internal documentation contradicts this narrative. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment in its 80-pages mentions Venezuela only six times. To put this in perspective, Mexico is mentioned 70 times, China 17 times, and even Canada - a close US ally - is mentioned seven times.

If Venezuela’s government was indeed responsible for “trafficking colossal amounts of deadly and illicit drugs into the United States,” and on a scale justifying military intervention, it would have been the centerpiece of the DEA’s report.

Instead, the report only mentions Venezuela under a section titled, “other violent transnational criminal organizations” and describes "Tren de Aragua" (TDA) as a street-level gang whose drug activities are "small-scale" and limited to the distribution of "tusi," not the “collosal” shipments of fentanyl or cocaine Washington accused the Venezuelan state of orchestrating. In fact, the DEA report does not mention the Venezuelan government or President Maduro even once in the entire report.

The disparity between the administration’s rhetoric and the DEA’s own documented findings reveals the pretext of “drugs” flowing from Venezuela no more a reality than “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq - both deliberate lies told to sell otherwise unprovoked wars of aggression.

Beyond Just an Oil Grab…

The true objectives of this war were laid bare during a recent White House press conference following the military strikes.

In a transcript of the conference, the word "drug" or "drugs" was mentioned only nine times. In contrast, the word "oil" was mentioned 27 times. President Trump’s rhetoric shifted rapidly from the supposed drug threat to the logistical details of seizing Venezuela’s natural resources.

President Trump declared the US would “run” Venezuela and that American oil companies would take over energy production in the seized nation.

Beyond a brazen resource grab, the attack on and toppling of Venezuela’s government fits into a much larger global war the US is waging both against the concept of multipolarism and its chief proponents, namely China and Russia.

At the same time the US declares control over Venezuela, it is fomenting deadly violence in the streets of Iran after having carried out direct military strikes on it mid-last year.

Recent reports in the New York Times admit the US has also been carrying out strikes on Russian energy production deep inside Russian territory itself (via the CIA) as well as conducting maritime drone strikes on tankers exporting Russian energy.

Venezuela, Iran, and Russia all share common characteristics - they are partners of and major oil exporters to China.

Venezuela shipped over 80% of its oil to China. In the middle of the US’ military build up and subsequent blockade of Venezuelan maritime shipping, at least one tanker bound for China was outright seized by the US.

Zooming out of the Western Hemisphere and accounting for ongoing US war and proxy war worldwide, a larger strategy emerges. Washington is in the process of implementing a long-desired, global energy blockade on China.

A 2018 policy paper from the US Naval War College Review titled "A Maritime Oil Blockade Against China" discussed the process of closing maritime chokepoints as part of a “distant blockade” just beyond the range of the majority of China’s military capabilities.

It also noted that China had worked to diversify away from overdependence on these maritime chokepoints, including through the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The paper proposed that BRI routes be targeted and cut.

Using the Myanmar-China pipeline as an example, the 2018 paper noted that if Myanmar’s government refused to close the pipeline during a US-China conflict, the US could disable it “via air strikes, aerial mining, or other kinetic action.”

Since the paper’s publication, the US has backed armed militants in Myanmar who have targeted, damaged, and at one point seized a section of the pipeline, jeopardizing one of China’s alternative land-based energy routes. The US has also promoted similar terrorism targeting Chinese BRI infrastructure in Pakistan as early as 2011 - terrorism that has been carried out since and continues to this day.

The 2018 paper also mentioned Russia’s ability to help sustain China even if a maritime blockade and cutting BRI infrastructure were successfully implemented. Though no recommendations were presented in the paper, the US is now admittedly in the middle of degrading Russian energy production and exports.

All of this taken together demonstrates how dangerously far this strategy has come to taking full shape.

A Wake Up Call

A particularly flawed theme has emerged across commentary circles, citing the US strike on Venezuela as a “retreat” to the Western Hemisphere where it seeks to carve out a “sphere of influence” rather than the continued pursuit of global dominance.

Often cited is the recent US National Security Strategy paper itself, which actually states, “the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself.” However, in the same sentence it also admits, “we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others,” which - in order to do so - necessitates continued US global dominance.

The attack on Venezuela did indeed take place in the Western Hemisphere. The US has indeed declared it seeks to dominate the entire Western Hemisphere.

However, at the same time, the US continues waging proxy war against Russia, destabilizing Iran, backing militants striking at China’s BRI infrastructure, all while US forces based in the Asia-Pacific region continue threatening maritime routes vital to China. The US maintains tens of thousands of troops in bases dotting the planet - located closer to the borders of Russia, Iran, and China than to America’s own shores.

This does not add up to “retreating” nor does it equate to creating a “sphere of influence” just because the US has attacked yet another nation elsewhere. Instead, it clearly constitutes a continued attempt to influence - and indeed dominate - the entire planet.

The future will depend on the world’s awareness of the persistent danger the US poses, its ability to protect itself from it, and multipolarism’s ability to build the world up faster than the US is demonstrably threatening and destroying it.

The author is a Bangkok-based independent geopolitical analyst and a former U.S. Marine.

New Year Starts, Same Old US Proxy War Continues

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Sun, 4 Jan 2026 07:49:00 -0800

January 3, 2026 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - While the United States government poses as “pursuing peace” with Russia regarding the ongoing war in Ukraine, it is now admitted that the US is overseeing a “supercharged” campaign targeting “Russian oil facilities and tankers” aimed at crippling Russia’s economy and its fighting capacity.

The revelation should come as no surprise. The campaign of long-range aerial drone strikes conducted deep inside Russian territory as well as maritime drone strikes taking place both within the Black Sea and far beyond it - in the Mediterranean Sea and off the coast of West Africa - requires intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities (ISR) only the US possesses.

Not only has the US made essential ISR available for these attacks, but both the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and at least the US Navy have been implicated in assisting directly in these attacks.

A New York Times article from early 2025 titled, “The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine,” would admit in regards to repeated maritime drone strikes carried out across the Black Sea that:

…the Biden administration had authorized helping the Ukrainians develop, manufacture and deploy a nascent fleet of maritime drones to attack Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. (The Americans gave the Ukrainians an early prototype meant to counter a Chinese naval assault on Taiwan.) First, the Navy was allowed to share points of interest for Russian warships just beyond Crimea’s territorial waters. In October, with leeway to act within Crimea itself, the C.I.A. covertly started supporting drone strikes on the port of Sevastopol.

If Ukraine was incapable of conducting their own maritime drone strikes along the coasts of Crimea, it most certainly would not have been able to conduct strikes much further abroad, meaning that more recent strikes carried out far beyond the Black Sea almost certainly required as much or more direct US involvement.

This has now been confirmed by a more recent NYT article.

Titled, “The Separation: Inside the Unraveling U.S.-Ukraine Partnership,” the article at first attempts to portray the administration of current US President Donald Trump as undermining Ukraine amid continued conflict with Russia. But the article then admits that just beneath the facade of “peace negotiations,” the US has actually escalated what has always been a US-instigated and US-led proxy war against Russia fought merely through Ukraine.

The article admits:

“Even as Mr. Trump bullied Mr. Zelensky, he seemed to coddle Mr. Putin. When the Russian stiff-armed peace proposals and accelerated bombing campaigns on Ukrainian cities, Mr. Trump would lash out on Truth Social and ask his aides, “Do we sanction their banks or do we sanction their energy infrastructure?” For months, he did neither.

But in secret, the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. military, with his blessing, supercharged a Ukrainian campaign of drone strikes on Russian oil facilities and tankers to hobble Mr. Putin’s war machine.”

This dovetails with reports from October 2025 that US intelligence agencies were assisting Ukraine in aerial drone strikes on Russian energy production facilities deep inside Russia. The NYT article also mentions “tankers,” implicating the US in the series of recent maritime drone strikes carried out on Russian-linked tankers worldwide.

The NYT article explains further:

“In June, beleaguered U.S. military officers met with their C.I.A. counterparts to help craft a more concerted Ukrainian campaign. It would focus exclusively on oil refineries and, instead of supply tanks, would target the refineries’ Achilles’ heel: A C.I.A. expert had identified a type of coupler that was so hard to replace or repair that a refinery would remain offline for weeks. (To avoid backlash, they would not supply weapons and other equipment that Mr. Vance’s allies wanted for other priorities.)”

And that:

“The energy strikes would come to cost the Russian economy as much as $75 million a day, according to one U.S. intelligence estimate. The C.I.A. would also be authorized to assist with Ukrainian drone strikes on “shadow fleet” vessels in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Gas lines would start forming across Russia.”

In other words - the US launched attacks on Russian energy production inside Russia as well as conducted maritime drone strikes on tankers moving Russian hydrocarbons wherever the US could find them - all of this politically laundered through Washington’s Ukrainian proxies - attacks Ukraine itself would be incapable of conducting on its own.

President Trump Helped Start War with Russia, and is Helping Escalate it

While US President Donald Trump has repeatedly depicted the ongoing conflict in Ukraine as “Biden’s war,” it was actually precipitated and prosecuted by a combined effort spanning the Obama, first Trump, Biden, and now second Trump administrations.

It was under the Obama administration that the US violently overthrew the Ukrainian government after years of attempted “color revolutions” stretching all the way back to 2004.

It was under the first Trump administration that lethal military aid began flowing publicly from the US to Ukraine - a policy option the RAND Corporation in its 2019 paper “Extending Russia” admitted would likely lead to, “more Russian aid to the separatists and an additional Russian troop presence,” policymakers hoped in turn would overextend Russia in the same way America’s proxy war with the Soviet Union had in Afghanistan.

The paper also inferred that providing lethal aid to Ukraine could ultimately lead to a large-scale conflict ending in, “disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows,” and that it might even lead to, “a disadvantageous peace” for Ukraine in the end - all of which has now since taken shape.

Considering the role each US administration has played since 2014 in provoking and expanding this conflict, it should come as no surprise that President Trump simply picked up right where both his predecessors and he himself had left off last.

US “Peace Negotiations” vs. Division of Labor

The very idea that the US now suddenly seeks to end a proxy war of its own design is itself a key function of perpetuating it even further.

In February 2025 US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth would deliver a directive to European nations in Brussels demanding they increase defense spending to 5% of their respective GDPs, “double down” on arming and backing Ukraine, expand their defense industrial bases, prepare the European public for “spending more on defense,” as well as preparing “European and non-European troops” for deployment inside Ukraine.

All of these demands were made under the framework of what Secretary Hegseth himself called a “division of labor,” within which Europe would take up a greater role in Washington’s proxy war with Russia while the US committed greater resources for an equally unnecessary confrontation with China in the Asia-Pacific region.

No part of this directive suggested a genuine desire to end the conflict in Ukraine - but rather an attempt to either freeze it under a Minsk 3.0-style ceasefire or otherwise pass the majority of the cost and risk of continuing the conflict onto Washington’s European proxies.

Since then, the US and Europe have posed as “splitting,” enabling European politicians to depict themselves before the European public as “abandoned” by the United States and thus left with no other alternative but “spending more on defense.”

In fact, in a New Year’s Eve address, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz would literally say, “for us Europeans this means that we must defend and assert our interests much more strongly by ourselves,” exactly as Secretary Hegseth ordered European leaders to do in early 2025 under his “division of labor” framework.

Under any "division of labor,” the overall project is not being “abandoned” by any participant - rather, various aspects of the project are assigned to different participants. The project at hand for the US is its continued decades-spanning pursuit of global domination. The US is merely feeding Europe into its proxy war with Russia to a greater extent and at greater risk to Europe than ever before.

The US has and will continue to oversee the entire conflict, making all major decisions - as it has done from its military command center in Wiesbaden, Germany - and making available unique ISR capabilities only the US possesses to continue its proxy war with Russia - simply swapping out its exhausted Ukrainian proxies with fresher European proxies.

The fact that the United States has escalated its proxy war with Russia through attacks it itself is planning and carrying out merely under the guise of a “Ukrainian” campaign, proves America’s actual intentions regardless of its empty rhetoric regarding “peace.”

The US Proxy War with Russia is Key to Containing China

In the background of Washington’s ongoing war on Russia is a much larger and more urgent policy of confronting and containing China - an imperative that necessitates continued pressure on China’s allies in Moscow.

Much of Washington’s strategy in confronting and containing China is based on a combination of maritime “distant blockades” imposed by a now completely reconfigured anti-shipping-centric US Marine Corps, attacks and disruptions along China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) land routes, as well as the degradation of Russian energy production that could sustain China’s economy and warfighting capacity even if the former two options are successfully implemented.

Laid out in detail in a 2018 US Naval War College Review paper titled, “A Maritime Oil Blockade Against China,” the US would impose a maritime blockade against Chinese shipping across the Asia-Pacific region including in the Malacca Strait, the South China Sea, and in and around the waters of the island province of Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, and South Korea.

The paper also discusses the necessity to disrupt China’s BRI which serves as alternative routes circumventing possible US maritime blockades. At one point in the paper it is suggested that the US could demand BRI partner nations to shutdown pipelines for the duration of any US-imposed action - and any failure to comply would result in US “air strikes, aerial mining, or other kinetic action.”

It should be noted that since the paper was published in 2018, the US has already begun carrying out strikes-by-proxy against BRI infrastructure, including on a Myanmar-China pipeline the paper used specifically as an example.

The 2018 paper then mentions Russia, noting that existing and expanding pipelines could allow China to adapt to any attempt by the US to impose a maritime oil blockade on it. While no measures are proposed on how to mitigate Russian oil exports to China in the 2018 paper - since then - the US has successfully provoked a large-scale protracted proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.

As the NYT has recently reported, the US has begun conducting a large-scale strike campaign against Russian energy production inside Russia as well as targeting Russian maritime energy exports - part of a US blockading policy that is also targeting Russian-Chinese ally Venezuela in Latin America and Iran in the Middle East - a policy that has already seized ships bound for China itself.

Because the US seeks to continue encircling and containing China, and degrading Russian energy production (and Russia’s utility as a Chinese ally in general) is a key prerequisite in doing so, the US is almost certainly not going to end its proxy war against Russia.

Instead, it will continue, possibly even escalate its campaign striking Russian energy production inside Russia, Russian pipelines, and maritime oil shipping, and gradually expanding operations to set the stage for similar operations aimed at China directly.

Thus, Washington’s “peace negotiations” amount to empty rhetoric, drowned out by America’s own actions through its Ukrainian and European proxies in a war that seeks to set the stage for an even larger, more dangerous confrontation with China.

Russia and ultimately China’s ability to counter not only US proxy warfare, but also the tools it uses to set the stage for it - including America’s uncontested global information dominance and the inability of potential US proxies to defend their information space against US political capture - will determine whether or not US policy is blunted and stopped or allowed to draw the rest of the world into the destructive conflict currently consuming both Russia and Europe.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

US Seeks Greenland Grab as Pursuit of Primacy Accelerates

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 22:43:00 -0800

December 30, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - All under the guise of “pursuing peace” in a proxy war the US itself engineered and is for all intents and purposes fighting against Russia simply through its Ukrainian proxies, the US continues setting the stage for wider and more dangerous escalation - both in terms of expanding an emerging global maritime blockade against Russian, Iranian, and even Chinese maritime shipping, as well as in terms of preparing Europe to feed itself into Washington’s proxy war as Ukraine’s fighting capacity collapses.

Continued (and now renewed) US interest in seizing Greenland from Denmark serves to accomplish both of these objectives.

A New Base for Wider Proxy War with Russia

Existing US military bases in Greenland are located closer to Moscow than any other US military base outside of mainland Europe (including Turkiye) and the UK.

Assuming that open US plans to have Europe “double down” on supporting Ukraine, including expanding military industrial production and arms shipments to Ukraine as well as preparing “European and non-European troops” to actually enter into Ukraine proceed, all under a US-led “division of labor,” US military facilities across mainland Europe and the UK would run the risk of dragging the US itself into any resulting Russian-European conflict.

This would defeat the purpose of this “division of labor.” Thus the US either reducing its military presence across mainland Europe and the UK or relocating essential operations to Greenland allows the US to provide close, but technically indirect support for European forces fighting Russia in the same way the US is currently providing close, but technically indirect support for Ukraine as it fights Russia.

Greenland could serve as a base of operations for continued and essential US ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) support, without which neither America’s Ukrainian nor its European proxies could effectively fight and successfully overextend Russia.

With the US operating outside of most of Europe, it could project the illusion of plausible deniability amid a Russian-European conflict enough to give itself and Russia the ability to avoid escalation into a direct US-Russian conflict - an escalation both Washington and Moscow presumably seek to avoid.

For the US, the entire purpose of waging this proxy war is to have US proxies pay the full cost of the conflict while the US enjoys the full benefits of it. For Moscow, the Ukraine conflict expanding into a European-Russian war backed by the US is still a lesser evil than a direct US-European-Russian war.

The US Preparing a Global Blockade

For years, prominent US corporate-financier funded think tanks have published policy papers planning blockades to strangle all peer and near-peer adversaries into submission. Chief among these adversaries is China.

A 2018 US Naval War College Review paper titled, “A Maritime Oil Blockade Against China,” describes not only a strategy to cut China off by imposing a maritime blockade, but examines all potential ways in which China would seek to circumvent such a blockade and proposes measures to take (which have since been implemented) to prevent China’s success in doing so.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) - a network of land routes that allow China to circumvent many of the key maritime chokepoints the US has invested decades of military expansion to threaten - is identified as one of these possible means of circumvention. The paper suggests targeting and destroying these routes, using the Myanmar-China oil pipeline as an example.

Since the paper was published, US-backed militants have actually begun physically targeting this pipeline (and more recently here). The paper itself suggests that amid any potential open US-China conflict, the US itself could conduct military strikes against such infrastructure.

US-backed militants have also attacked Chinese BRI infrastructure in Pakistan - particularly in Pakistan’s southwest Baluchistan region where US policymakers have sought to eliminate BRI projects since as early as 2011.

The 2018 paper also mentions Russia as a key partner of China, sharing a long land border and already exporting huge amounts of energy across it to China. Russia presents a formidable challenge to US plans to strangle China through maritime blockades. Since the 2018 paper was published the US has since begun its proxy war with Russia itself - and more specifically - targeting both Russian energy production itself and Russian energy exports.

Nominally “Ukrainian” maritime drones have begun targeting Russian energy exports far beyond just the Black Sea and have now carried out attacks in the Mediterranean Sea, the Caspian Sea, and even off the coast of West Africa.

The New York Times itself, in a March 2025 article titled, “The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine,” would admit:

The implication is that the US is both supplying the maritime drones being used to attack Russian vessels, as well as “supporting the drone strikes” themselves through deep CIA involvement. More recent “Ukrainian” maritime drone strikes far beyond the Black Sea are almost certainly the product of US support being only possible leveraging America’s global network of military and covert action facilities.

Not only do these strikes on Russian energy production undermine Russia’s own economic stability, it fulfills a primary objective in preparing the ground for a successful maritime blockade of China itself - eliminating or severely reducing Russia’s ability to support China in the event of a US-imposed blockade on China in coordination with strikes on China’s BRI infrastructure.

More alarming still are reports that the US’ current and widening covert and overt maritime blockade being carried out worldwide, has targeted ships bound for China - specifically off the coast of Venezuela in Latin America.

As the US ramps up covert/overt maritime seizures and blockades worldwide, the US expanding its presence in Greenland essentially “corks” the Russian-Chinese Northern Sea Route - a sea route that connects the Bering Strait to the Norwegian Sea via Arctic waters and has remained relatively out of reach of the US and its proxies.

Beyond simply examining maps and speculating about US motives, the current US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has admitted that controlling Greenland is directly tied to controlling shipping lanes along the Arctic.

In a January 2025 interview published on the State Department’s official website, Secretary Rubio explicitly stated:

“…the Arctic Circle and the Arctic region is going to become critical for shipping lanes, for how you get some of this energy that’s going to be produced under President Trump – these energies rely on shipping lanes. The Arctic has some of the most valuable shipping lanes in the world. As some of the ice is melting, it’s become more and more navigable. We need to be able to defend that.

So if you project what the Chinese have done, it is just a matter of time before – because they are not an Arctic power. They do not have an Arctic presence, so they need to be able to have somewhere that they can stage from. And it is completely realistic to believe that the Chinese will eventually – maybe even in the short term – try to do in Greenland what they have done at the Panama Canal and in other places, and that is install facilities that give them access to the Arctic with the cover of a Chinese company but that in reality serve a dual purpose: that in a moment of conflict, they could send naval vessels to that facility and operate from there. And that is completely unacceptable to the national security of the world and to the United – to the security of the world and the national security of the United States.”

While Secretary Rubio attempts to frame US actions as responding to a supposed Chinese threat, the purpose is clearly to close off any potential alternative to the maritime chokepoints the US has already poised its military forces across the Asia-Pacific region to close.

The BBC in a more recent article cited US President Donald Trump and his specific mentioning of “Chinese and Russian ships as potential threats in the nearby seas.”

While theories abound of why the US is targeting Venezuela and Greenland - mainly centered on a US “retreat” from global hegemony - in reality the US is targeting both as part of an accelerated pursuit of Russia and China’s encirclement, containment, and ultimately, primacy. Not only does Venezuela factor into a growing global maritime blockade the US and its proxies are incrementally imposing, its elimination through military-imposed regime change further isolates its Russian, Chinese and also Iranian allies.

Greenland’s seizure by the US allows the US to not only expand its maritime blockade to target the Northern Sea Route, it also allows the US to fully implement its “division of labor” in Europe regarding its continued proxy war with Russia from a relatively safe distance.

Only time will tell whether or not Russia, China, and the rest of the aspiring multipolar world are able to counter these accelerated US ambitions or will be fooled by disingenuous “peace deals” and feints of a “retreat” to the Western Hemisphere. The sooner these US ambitions are exposed and checked, the sooner they can be stopped, and the less damage they are able to inflict on the world.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

A New Space Race Above Earth May Determine Who Prevails Upon It

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 03:26:00 -0800

December 24, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - In early December 2025, private Chinese aerospace company, LandSpace, test-launched its Zhuque-3 rocket. The rocket is designed to place payloads into Earth orbit while recovering its first stage booster, much like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch system and now Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket.

The launch was a partial success. The second stage successfully reached orbit while the first stage struck the landing pad hundreds of miles downrange destroying it. Despite an obvious anomaly preventing a successful landing - industry analysts concluded the attempted landing came spectacularly close for a first attempt.

It took Falcon 9 several attempts before successfully landing its first stage booster, and more recently, US-based aerospace company Blue Origin 2 attempts to successfully land New Glenn’s first stage.

Blue Origin is only the second company to do so after US-based SpaceX which - for years now - has routinely launched payloads to orbit with its Falcon 9 launch vehicle while recovering and reusing Falcon’s first stage boosters.

The Reusable Rocket Revolution

SpaceX has refined this process of launching and recovering first stage boosters to the extent of launching, landing, recovering, and turning around boosters for their next launch within 30 days.

The rapid reusability of SpaceX’ Falcon 9 has already revolutionized access to Earth orbit - drastically reducing costs while vastly expanding the number of launches possible per year. Blue Origin, should it successfully repeat New Glenn’s recent success while scaling up production and its launch cadence, would expand US access to orbit even further.

Rapid reusability allows for the deployment of vast constellations of satellites over vastly shorter periods of time. SpaceX’ Starlink constellation, a low earth orbit network of 8,000+ communication satellites improves global coverage and significantly reduces signal latency over older, less numerous existing satellite communication networks located in higher, geostationary orbits.

Such constellations lend significant advantages to the nations who deploy and have access to them.

As demonstrated in Ukraine, networks like SpaceX’s Starlink don’t just improve civilian satellite communication, but also enhance military communication as well as providing links to long-range drones (especially naval drones) line-of-sight radio signals cannot match.

SpaceX has provided a significant advantage to the US commercially and militarily - an advantage the US seeks to fully exploit, and do so far beyond Starlink.

For example, the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has enlisted SpaceX and its Starlink platform to develop what is calls, "Starshield," essentially a military version of Starlink, merging its communication capabilities together with target tracking, optical and signal surveillance, as well as early missile warning capabilities.

Between being publicly announced in 2022 to present day, nearly 200 Starshield satellites have been placed into orbit - an achievement that would have been impossible without SpaceX and its fleet of reusable launch systems - and an achievement other nations like Russia and China cannot currently match.

Russia, China Playing Catch Up

While nations like Russia and China have their own constellations of civilian and military satellites, neither have constellations as large as the US primarily because of limitations on how quickly launches can be conducted to place them into orbit.

Throughout 2025, for example, the US conducted (approximately) 170 launches versus China’s 78, and Russia’s 15.

In previous years, China had actually overtaken the US in annual launches. However, with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch system, this balance has been decisively tilted back in America’s favor.

Zhuque-3 test launches are expected to continue throughout 2026 with the company aiming to continue reaching orbit while finally successfully landing the first stage booster. From there, it will depend on how quickly and reliably LandSpace can repeat this success as well as how fast it can expand both rocket production and supporting infrastructure to significantly expand its launch cadence.

Just as SpaceX - a single aerospace company - has radically expanded US access to orbit, LandSpace could be positioned to do likewise for China.

However, just as the US now has Blue Origin pursuing its own reusable launch system, China has several other private companies and state-owned enterprises aiming to do likewise.

Private company Space Pioneer with its Tianlong-3 rocket and China’s Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology - under the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) - with its Long March 12A rocket are both planning to launch and possibly attempt to recover first stage boosters in late 2025 to early 2026.

Both rockets represent systems similar in size and with roughly similar potential capabilities as SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

Russia, on the other hand, had announced its Amur (or Soyuz-7) launch system as a candidate for reusable launches, but has drastically delayed its development to prioritize the production and launch of existing rockets, including newer launch systems much closer to completion. This includes continued Soyuz crewed and uncrewed flights, Proton launches, the planned initial launch of Soyuz-5 which is intended to replace the older Proton system, and continued launches of Russia’s relatively new family of Angara rockets.

Thus, the likelihood of Russia developing its own reusable launch capability in the near future is low. However, as a close partner with China, it will likely benefit from any success China achieves in the near future in a variety of ways.

Purpose-Driven Capabilities Exploited by Primacy-Driven Interests

SpaceX and Blue Origin ostensibly claim their primary objective is to expand humanity beyond Earth. SpaceX has been focused on the colonization of Mars while Blue Origin’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has made proposals for massive orbital habitats (similar to those proposed by physicist Gerard K. O'Neill in the 1970s) in his 2019 “For the Benefit of Earth” talk.

Both companies are also participating in NASA’s bid to return human beings to the moon.

However, whatever truth there is behind these purpose-driven objectives, both US-based companies exist within a profit-driven system engaged in the pursuit of global primacy, increasingly using the capabilities these companies have developed not “for the benefit of Earth,” but to dominate it.

Blue Origin-developed rocket engines, the BE-4, have already been used on joint Lockheed-Boeing United Launch Alliance (ULA) missions for the US NRO.

In addition to SpaceX’s collaboration with the NRO in the creation of Starshield, it has for years regularly conducted launches for the US Space Force, and before that, the US Air Force. These capabilities, in turn, have enabled continued US global military encroachment and aggression targeting both Russia and China’s partners and allies, as well as threatening both nations themselves.

SpaceX is an anomaly amid the US aerospace industry - an industry that has for decades been driven by the pursuit of profit over any other purpose, including innovation.

Before SpaceX’s Falcon 9 became operational, most US national security payloads were launched using United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V and Delta IV rockets. Both rockets were fully expendable. Their designs represented upgrades of rockets and systems from as early as the 1960’s. Because ULA (and before that, Boeing and Lockheed which merged to create ULA) held a monopoly over orbital launches and existed solely to maximize profit - there was no need to innovate. Any excess revenue diverted toward research and development would only have undermined shareholder primacy.

SpaceX, a private corporation founded by Elon Musk, disrupted the comfortable monopoly Boeing and Lockheed enjoyed, prioritizing rapid innovation over shareholder profits. Not only has SpaceX succeeded in cutting edge innovation, it is also making profits and outcompeting Boeing and Lockheed’s ULA.

Initially, lobbyists representing established aerospace corporations attempted to block SpaceX’s entry into government launches. Today, US policy think tanks funded by corporations like Boeing and Lockheed, hold SpaceX up as an example of the innovation possible because of the American system. In reality, SpaceX succeeded despite it.

These same policymakers now seek to exploit the capabilities a purpose-driven SpaceX developed to enhance the continued profit and power-driven pursuit of US primacy.

Russia and China, on the other hand, have entirely purpose-driven state-owned enterprises engaged in every aspect of national development - from energy production, to military industrial production, and aerospace research and development.

Russia’s limitations come in the form of its smaller population and economy and the constraints placed on it by ongoing US containment and confrontation, especially amid the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine. While it is unlikely Russia can now match or exceed the capabilities enabled by SpaceX, Russia had previously surpassed the US in terms of launch capabilities - at one point shuttling US astronauts to and from the International Space Station for years because of the inability of US aerospace monopolies to develop a timely replacement for the Space Shuttle.

China, on the other hand, has a larger economy, a vastly larger industrial base, more modern and extensive infrastructure, and millions more STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) graduates each year than the US. Together with purpose-driven state-owned enterprises and national policy promoting purpose-driven private business, China has already surpassed the United States across a number of fields and will almost certainly surpass US space launch capabilities in both quality and quantity, barring extreme preemptive measures taken by the US.

A New Space Race - New Rules

SpaceX’s Elon Musk, in regards to the test launch of Zhuque-3, remarked that even if it is successful, by the time it reaches large-scale production and use, SpaceX’s next-generation launch system - Starship - will have surpassed it.

However, linear comparisons to China’s development have proven tragically flawed.

Just because it took years for China to catch up to the US in terms of space launch capabilities before SpaceX pushed the US back into the lead, and now it has taken several more years for China to begin developing and testing its own reusable rockets, doesn’t mean it will take the same amount of time to match SpaceX’s Starship, or that China won’t be able to leapfrog US space launch capabilities altogether.

China is already developing the super-heavy Long March 9 and 10 launch systems meant to perform the same roles as SpaceX’s Starship, with engine production and testing already ongoing.

While the US has one purpose-driven space launch company - perhaps two (Blue Origin) - China represents a vastly larger purpose-driven nation with all the ingredients necessary to not only rapidly match the US, but permanently surpass it.

In an overall military, economic, and industrial competition the US is losing to China in virtually all regards, it is unlikely to maintain its advantage over China in terms of space launch capabilities - especially considering these capabilities were developed despite the primary characteristics of America’s socio-economic and political system, not because of it.

Should China fail to catch up to the US for a variety of reasons - including ongoing US ambitions to encircle and contain China with chaos, conflict, and even proxy war in the same manner it has done so to Russia - a large and dangerous advantage will be given to the US who has long-since demonstrated an eager desire to fully exploit it economically and even militarily.

The lopsided access to space afforded by reusable launch systems means placing not only larger and more capable satellite constellations into orbit, it also means being able to target and remove the constellations of others from orbit.

This includes the use of co-orbital satellites (sometimes called "killer satellites" or "inspector satellites") able to approach the satellites of other nations. Nations like the US with a high launch cadence can quickly put new, more advanced co-orbital satellites into orbit, or replace any losses from an adversary’s co-orbital or anti-satellite capabilities.

This represents a lopsided balance of power in orbit, creating a potentially lopsided balance of power back on Earth.

Only time will tell whether or not China’s ability to match the US in all matters on Earth can be extended over this new space race above it.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

Thai-Cambodian Conflict Threatens Asian Stability by Design

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 04:03:00 -0800

December 15, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Major hostilities erupted once again early to mid-December in Southeast Asia along the borders of Thailand and Cambodia following a troubled “ceasefire” which included incidents and provocations for months since the last round of major fighting took place in July 2025.

Despite any resulting ceasefire, the fundamental issues driving the conflict remain entirely unresolved, primarily because these issues stem from foreign interests using regional conflict to complicate both Asia’s rise in general, and China’s rise specifically.

The Nature of the Fighting

Fighting erupted after Cambodian land mines and small arms fire left Thai troops injured and dead early December 8 leading to spiraling violence involving heavy artillery, warplanes, drones, and intense small arms fire at locations all along the Thai-Cambodian border.

Cambodia launched hundreds of BM-21 unguided multiple launch rocket system munitions into Thailand prompting the Thai military to respond with air and drone strikes targeting both the launchers themselves as well as local ammunition depots used for staging rockets. Positional fighting resulted in disputed territory changing hands day-to-day just as it had during the previous fighting in July.

Amid the fighting, footage and Thai military statements indicated Cambodia was also using Ukrainian-style FPV (first-person-view) drones - there were also intercepted communications featuring English-speaking drone operators.

This indicates that the US, either directly or through one of its many proxies, has aided Cambodia in a similar manner to its successful overthrow of the Syrian government late last year. It was admitted then that similar Ukraine-style FPV drones and Western operators aided militants in pushing back and eventually overrunning Russian and Iranian-backed Syrian forces.

Adding further to suspicions of a US role in the recent violence is Cambodia’s own vocal, repeated appeals for US involvement as a mediator, versus Thailand’s repeated refusal to accept directives delivered from Washington.

“Extending China”

The on-and-off border fighting disrupts peace and stability threatening the rapid rise of not only China, but the rest of Asia with it - including close Chinese partners like Thailand and obviously Cambodia itself.

The conflict represents part of a strategy already documented and being applied to Russia meant to encircle and contain it through economic pressure and the creation and expansion of multiple simultaneous conflicts along its periphery.

This strategy was laid out in detail in the 2019 RAND Corporation paper titled, “Extending Russia,” and included plans to provoke a deadly proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, to continue arming “Syrian rebels” who have since overthrown the Russian-backed government in Syria, for attempted regime change in Belarus, to exploit tensions in the South Caucasus, to reduce Russian influence in Central Asia, and to challenge Russia’s presence in Transnistria.

It should be mentioned that all of these options have either been implemented or are in the process of being implemented and that the US is pursuing an identical strategy in regards to China as well.

Earlier in December of this year, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute hosted current US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine. In the talk he specifically mentioned the ongoing US strategy to maintain global primacy and to confront a rising China.

During the talk he explicitly stated:

“…so when we look at the rise of the Chinese military, what our goal in the joint force is to create multiple, simultaneous dilemmas for ALL of the adversaries around the world, so that they are very cautious and concerned about doing something that would bring any sense of threat to the American people. “

While it could be argued that General Caine meant ”dilemmas” created by US military capabilities amid a hypothetical conflict with China, throughout the talk he repeatedly linked the concept of creating “dilemmas” to all domains of US geopolitical power, including the ongoing AI (artificial intelligence) race - well outside any ongoing US-China conflict - just as the US has done to Russia.

In many ways the US is already pursuing an “extending China” policy as laid out in the RAND paper against Russia, but targeting China along its periphery.

The US already backs armed conflict to Thailand’s west in Myanmar where it supports militants attacking Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure carrying hydrocarbons from Myanmar’s coast to China’s southern border. Composed of pipelines, the infrastructure allows China to bypass the Strait of Malacca the US has planned to blockade in the event of an open US-China conflict, according to US policy papers.

The same policy papers even noted that in order for a maritime blockade of China to succeed, China’s BRI infrastructure would need to be severed as well. One paper even proposed bombing it amid any US-Chinese conflict, but it is clear the US has already begun attacking Chinese BRI infrastructure by proxy long before any such conflict erupts.

Similar US-backed attacks are taking place across Pakistan targeting Chinese BRI infrastructure there.

As part of this strategy of “extending China,” the US has stationed tens of thousands of US troops across South Korea, Japan, and increasingly the Philippines. It also maintains hundreds of US troops on the Chinese island province of Taiwan itself. In addition to hosting US troops, these nations have been encouraged by Washington to adopt increasingly hostile postures toward Beijing despite the economic damage caused in the process.

The US military operates throughout the South China Sea supposedly to preserve “freedom of navigation” against what it depicts as a threat from China when, in reality, US government-funded think tanks admit the majority of navigation through these waters is coming from and going to China itself. This means the US seeks to threaten and eventually disrupt navigation through the South China Sea - not protect it.

Just as the RAND paper sought to overthrow nations along Russia’s periphery, the US has, for years, attempted to overthrow and politically capture nations along China’s periphery through opposition groups funded and directed by US “soft power,” including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Most recently, the US successfully overthrew the government of Nepal, right on China’s border.

The US has also extensively targeted Southeast Asia with political interference, specifically to remove China-friendly governments and replace them with US client regimes - including in Thailand.

Targeting Thailand to Extend China

The US since 2001 has sought to politically capture Thailand through US-backed billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra and his political allies. In recent years, the US has also begun backing Thai billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit and his various political parties.

Both billionaires represent eager servants of US interests. During Thaksin’s time in office from 2001-2006, he helped privatize Thai state-owned enterprises before selling them off to US investors, sent Thai troops to participate in the US occupation of Iraq, and hosted secret CIA detention camps. While Thaksin never publicly opposed Thai relations with Beijing, he clearly had/has a preference for Washington.

Thanathorn, however, is a vocal opponent of closer cooperation with China. His various political parties have consistently opposed arms purchases of any kind from China, opting for US-European arms deals instead. Thanathorn himself had previously called for the cancellation of the already-under-construction Thai-Chinese high-speed railway in favor of the non-existent “hyperloop” system.

During a public hyperloop presentation, Thanathorn would expose his underlying intentions, saying:

“I think over the past 5 years we have been giving too much importance in dealing with China. We want to reduce that and we want to rebalance our relationship to Europe, to Japan, to the US more.”

Over the past 20+ years, the US has helped organize violent “color revolutions” seeking to install Thaksin, Thanathorn, and their political allies into power. Former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, a close friend and associate of Thaksin, aided US political interference in Thailand by hosting Thai opposition groups and allowing Cambodia to serve as a base of operations for them.

Even amid fighting along the border, US-backed opposition parties have sought to rewrite the entire Thai constitution, specifically to make it easier for US-backed parties to take power and prevent Thai institutions, including both the courts and the Thai military, from removing them.

Among the “nongovernmental organizations” (NGOs) promoting a constitution rewrite is “iLaw.” Admittedly funded by the US government NED and George Soros’ Open Society, iLaw represents a vector of foreign influence targeting Thailand’s most sensitive internal political affairs on behalf of equally compromised US-backed political parties.

This foreign influence constitutes a danger lurking inside Thailand as dangerous as the foreign-influenced danger targeting Thailand’s border with Cambodia. Together, these “dilemmas” are being created specifically to undermine and eventually strip away one of the region’s closest partners to China.

Chinese-Thai Relations Are the Target

Despite enduring stereotypes regarding Thailand’s “pro-US” position and Cambodia being “pro-China,” a close look at current reality reveals a different story.

One of the most cited points in favor of this theory is Thailand’s status as a “major non-NATO ally” of the United States - a status granted to Thailand in 2003 when Thaksin Shinawatra was at the height of his power and in the process of delivering Thailand as a proxy to Washington, before a military coup ousted him in 2006.

Following Thailand’s military ousting Thaksin and his sister Yingluck Shinawatra from power in 2006 and 2014 respectively, Thailand has spent approximately two times more on weapons from China than Cambodia has, including larger quantities of weapons and more sophisticated weapons. This includes main battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, air defense systems, jointly-developed long-range guided multiple launch rocket systems, drones, and even naval vessels.

China’s trade with Thailand is vastly greater than with Cambodia, as are its investments in infrastructure. In addition to the high-speed rail line, China has also invested in or has been contracted to build hospitals, government buildings, and airport terminals throughout Thailand. Chinese companies, especially from its auto industry, are investing in factories in Thailand - representing vastly more value than Chinese investments in neighboring Cambodia.

China represents both Thailand’s largest source of imports as well as its largest export market.

In addition to economic ties and the Thai military’s large and growing relationship with China, the revered Thai monarchy has also built a close relationship with Beijing. The current Thai king, King Rama 10, has even recently visited Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing - the first Thai king to do so. King Rama 10’s sister, Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn speaks Mandarin and has made repeated official trips to Beijing.

For this and many other reasons, the Thai military and monarchy have been targeted for years by US-funded opposition groups attempting to mute or remove entirely both as strong, independent Thai institutions.

Cambodia: A Weak Link

Cambodia, on the other hand, despite the vast majority of its military equipment being Chinese-made, and hosting Chinese investments in real estate and manufacturing, counts the United States as its largest export market while using the US dollar as a de facto currency within Cambodia itself.

In the past 2-3 years, Cambodia has also begun a pivot toward closer cooperation with the United States militarily since former PM Hun Sen’s son, Hun Manet - a US West Point graduate - took power. During this period, Cambodia has hosted US warships at ports near those recently refurbished by China (with plans to visit the refurbished ports in the near future), announced renewed joint military drills with the US, and has begun discussions of wider “defense cooperation.”

In other words, while China represents Cambodia’s primary source of military hardware and foreign investment, the US still maintains disproportionate leverage over Cambodia - first economically, and now politically.

Because exports make up the majority of Cambodia’s GDP, and the vast majority of Cambodian exports go to the US, with those exports being primarily textiles and garments produced in factories built by Chinese investors, the US can easily extort concessions from Cambodia’s government by threatening to impose bans on goods it can claim circumvent US trade controls on China itself.

It is easy to see how not only the Thai-Cambodian border conflict fits into an already ongoing US “extending China” policy, but also how the US convinced Cambodia to volunteer itself into becoming a Southeast Asian “Ukraine” to do so.

Regardless of any ceasefire following December’s hostilities, US intentions to use the Thai-Cambodian border conflict within its much wider “extending China” policy means the danger of instability will hang over the region well into the foreseeable future.

The only question now is whether both Thailand and China can maintain peace and stability in the region to maintain Asia’s continued rise, or US attempts to gnaw at a key Chinese partner - both along its borders and from within its own political system - can turn Asia into the same environment of conflict and chaos the US has turned the Middle East, Europe, and Africa into for so many years.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

US Beta-Testing China Blockade with Attacks on Russian Energy Exports

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 04:01:00 -0800

December 6, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The incremental build-up toward an overt blockade against Russian energy exports continues with recent aerial and naval drone strikes on both Russian energy production facilities deep within Russian territory, as well as Russian energy terminals and ships used to carry Russian energy exports moving to and from them.

The most recent incidents include attacks on tankers off the coast of Turkey in the Black Sea and naval drone strikes on the Novorossiysk Fuel Oil Terminal. There was also an apparent attack on a tanker involved in moving Russian energy exports, off the coast of Senegal in West Africa, Newsweek would report.

Western media sources have, over the course of several years now, admitted that Ukraine’s aerial and naval drone campaigns are facilitated and directed by the United States through its military command center in Wiesbaden, Germany as well as through the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which has assumed control over Ukraine’s intelligence services since as early as 2014, the New York Times admitted.

The New York Times in its 2025 article, “The Secret history of America’s Involvement in the Ukraine War,” would admit specifically that:

“…the Biden administration had authorized helping the Ukrainians develop, manufacture and deploy a nascent fleet of maritime drones to attack Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. (The Americans gave the Ukrainians an early prototype meant to counter a Chinese naval assault on Taiwan.) First, the Navy was allowed to share points of interest for Russian warships just beyond Crimea’s territorial waters. In October, with leeway to act within Crimea itself, the C.I.A. covertly started supporting drone strikes on the port of Sevastopol.”

Besides admittedly directing the attacks itself, the US enables such operations through the use of unique intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities no other Western nation possesses. Thus, attempts to assign responsibility to nations like the UK and France still ultimately implicate the US.

In regards to aerial drones strikes on Russian energy production facilities deep inside Russian territory, Reuters would publish its article, “US intelligence helps Ukraine target Russian energy infrastructure, FT reports,” noting:

“The U.S. has been helping Ukraine mount long-range strikes on Russian energy facilities for months in a joint effort to weaken the economy and force President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

U.S. intelligence has helped Kyiv strike important Russian energy assets, including oil refineries, far beyond the front line, the newspaper said, citing unnamed Ukrainian and U.S. officials familiar with the campaign.”

While the recent attacks on Russian energy production and exports is being presented by the Western media and even some independent commentators as being at cross purposes with US President Donald Trump’s various “peace” proposals, they are actually the manifestation of long-standing US geopolitical objectives aimed at stretching out and undermining Russia and beyond.

Attacks on Russian Energy Production and Exports Years in the Making

This strategy was laid out years before Russia launched its Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine in 2022, aimed at “extending Russia,” eventually precipitating a Soviet Union-style collapse, and all as part of a much wider strategy of likewise isolating and containing a rising China.

In a 2019 RAND Corporation paper literally titled, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground,” in its table of contents included both “geopolitical measures,” like “provide lethal aid to Ukraine” to trigger the now ongoing proxy war with Russia, and “economic emasures” including “hinder petroleum exports” and “reduce natural gas exports and hinder pipeline expansions.”

Very clearly these policies have been implemented for years under the Obama, Trump, Biden, and now second Trump administrations and include, first sanctions targeting the construction of Nord Stream 2 and eventually its destruction, as well as sanctions placed on Russian energy production and exports from 2014 onward. The more recent physical attacks on Russian energy production inside Russian territory with the aid of US intelligence and now strikes on tankers used to transport Russian energy exports abroad represents an escalation of these long-stated US objectives.

Not only do these attacks have an impact on Russia’s economy regardless of whether this impact meets US expectations, it also creates a dilemma for another nation targeted by US encroachment, encirclement, and containment - Russia’s close partner, China.

A 2018 US Naval War College Review paper, “A Maritime Oil Blockade Against China,” would explicitly lay out a strategy to blockade China, noting the obstacles impeding any attempt by the US to do so when the paper was written. An array of proposals were made in order to remove these obstacles - proposals that have since begun implementation including the reconfiguration of the US Marine Corps into an Asia-Pacific anti-shipping force enabling the US to establish chokepoints depicted in a map included in the 2018 paper.

The paper also discussed land routes China was creating through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to bypass these maritime chokepoints and the necessity to pressure nations hosting BRI infrastructure to close it down during a US-Chinese conflict or face US military strikes to physically destroy it. However, long before any open US-Chinese conflict has begun, the US has already conducted strikes-by-proxy on BRI infrastructure, particularly in Pakistan and Myanmar, through US-backed militants.

The paper also noted the significance of Russia’s and China’s shared land border and the already large supply of energy exports Russia was sending China in 2018 and how these exports would only expand over time. The paper made it clear that even with a US maritime blockade imposed on China and the physical destruction of BRI infrastructure, Russian energy exports to China may be enough to allow China to endure.

The implications were clear, in order to successfully and fully blockade China and deliver a crippling blow to its economy and thus its continued rise, not only would the US need to continue preparing for a maritime blockade and the targeting of BRI infrastructure, it would also need to degrade Russia’s ability to supply China with energy.

Now, just as the US is using armed proxies to strike at Chinese BRI infrastructure, the US is using Ukraine to carry out an expanding armed campaign against both Russian energy production within its borders, and Russian energy exports around the globe.

The 2018 paper, far from an obscure, random brainstorm, reflects US policy both past and present. Just as the 2018 paper linked Russia to US efforts to contain China, current US “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth has linked the ongoing US proxy war on Russia to US efforts to contain China and the urgent necessity of a “division of labor” with which Washington’s European proxies continue “extending Russia” in Ukraine while the US continues its expanding strategy of encircling and containing China in the Asia-Pacific.

Not only does the US strategy of attacking and degrading Russian energy production and exports serve its stated objective of “extending Russia,” it is also a prerequisite for Washington’s stated objective of containing a rising China. The nascent blockade the US is incrementally imposing on Russia will also serve as a “beta-test” for likewise imposing a blockade on China.

Conversely, Russia and China’s ability to counter this US strategy will determine not just the viability of America’s proxy war on Russia in Eastern Europe, but that of its growing confrontation with China in the Asia-Pacific.

Russia’s and China’s Deterrence Deficit

The US’ ability to impose such dilemmas on both Russia and China through proxies affords it the illusion of plausible deniability - preventing Russia and China from retaliating directly and instead forcing both nations to retaliate against US proxies the US itself sees as fully disposable.

Following attacks on Russian energy production and exports, Russia has threatened to, in turn, blockade Ukraine. While this will have devastating consequences for Ukraine itself, it will do little to deter the United States which devised this strategy, enables Ukraine to conduct these attacks, and even directs the attacks itself.

Unless Russia and China can devise a means to actually deter the US itself from its strategy of waging war by proxy (or prevent the US from politically capturing nations and using them as proxies in the first place), the US will continue to inflict damage on both Russia and China, at little to no cost to itself.

Alternatively, Russia and China can continue building up their military and economic capabilities faster than the US can degrade or destroy them, preventing the US from ever successfully blockading and strangling either nation socioeconomically, while continuing to invest in and build up a multipolar alternative to US unipolar hegemony.

Only time will tell whether or not Russia and China fully understand both the actual objectives of US foreign policy and the means by which to defend against and overcome it. The future of not only Russia and China hangs in the balance - but also that of all other nations - from those used as proxies by the US, to those the US seeks to target or use next in its global pursuit of primacy.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

New US “Peace” Proposal is “Minsk 3.0” Repackaged (Yet Again)

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 03:59:00 -0800

November 28, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The US has once again proposed what it calls a “peace plan” amid its own ongoing proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.

The contents of the proposal are irrelevant. The US does not seek peace in general, and certainly not with Russia specifically. Instead, and what previous proposals likewise represented, this is an attempt to freeze the ongoing conflict, rebuild Ukraine’s armed forces - and if possible - move Western troops into Ukraine itself to create a bufferzone possibly forcing advancing Russian forces to stop.

Beyond mere speculation, this is what US Secretary of Defense (now “Secretary of War”) Pete Hegseth laid out himself in a public directive delivered to Europe in Brussels in February of this year.

Despite Secretary Hegseth going out of his way to insist, “this must not be Minsk 3.0,” the directive not only explicitly lays out a “Minsk 3.0” framework complete with freezing the ongoing conflict (not ending it), “doubling down” and “re-committing” to Ukraine’s “security needs,” thus rebuilding Ukraine’s armed forces, it actually exceeded it with an additional Syria-style bufferzone imposed by “European and non-European troops.”

Just as Minsk 1 and 2 prevented Ukraine’s armed forces from being overwhelmed and any actual peace being achieved, this new “Minsk 3.0” proposal seeks to freeze the conflict once again, specifically to prevent any genuine resolution from emerging.

With “European and non-European troops” placed into Ukraine, Russia’s ability to resume its Special Military Operation (SMO) once it becomes clear the US has once again violated its agreement with Russia, will be complicated by a now deeply entrenched NATO presence inside Ukraine - just as US and Turkish forces complicated the full retaking of Syria by Damascus and its Russian and Iranian allies, ultimately leading to the complete collapse of the Russian and Iranian-backed government in late 2024.

Even if the US were to propose a deal explicitly excluding any of these possibilities it must be remembered the original Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 agreements did as well and were simply, blatantly, and very deliberately violated by both the US and its Ukrainian and European proxies.

It must also be remembered that the US, far beyond just the conflict in Ukraine, has violated every single agreement, treaty, and understanding ever proposed to Russia - and before that - the Soviet Union. There exists a long trail of unilaterally upended arms treaties, memorandums, and agreements left by successive US administrations including by President Donald Trump himself including the now scrapped Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and the Treaty on Open Skies.

The current Trump administration has in just under its first year in office alone, used proposed “peace deals” and “ceasefires” with Iran and Lebanon-based Hezbollah as cover for attempted and successful decapitation strikes by both US proxies (Israel), as well as strikes carried out by the US itself against Iran.

The Russian Response

It is impossible to say with certainty how the Kremlin interprets these proposals. It is almost impossible to conceive Russia’s leadership could be naive enough to believe anything being proposed by the US or even believing the US could in any conceivable way seek peace in the first place.

However, with Minsk 1 and 2 in hindsight and Russian President Vladimir Putin himself having agreed to both proposals despite later admitting they were “sheer deception” according to Russian state media, TASS, it raises questions as to why these agreements were ever accepted in the first place and whether or not Russia will accept future proposals by the West.

It could be that Russia was simply not ready in 2014-2015 to launch what would eventually shape into the 2022 SMO and felt the time Minsk 1 and 2 created for both sides could be better utilized by Russia and eventually place it in a stronger position than Ukraine and its US sponsors when the SMO was launched.

This latest proposal by the US must be understood by Russia as yet another obvious deception, with Secretary Hegseth admitting to the real objectives the US was and still obviously is working towards in regards to encircling and containing both Russia and its Chinese allies.

Agreeing to it would only happen if Russia felt it required a pause itself and believed it could once again use the time a pause would afford it better than the US and its proxies. It would also have to believe it would be prepared to deal with any deployment of “European and non-European troops” to Ukraine in a manner more successful than it did in the now toppled and decimated Syrian Arab Republic.

Or, Russia may simply play along with each successive proposal while Russian forces continue their exponentially accelerating advance on the battlefield in Ukraine as Ukraine’s fighting capacity collapses.

By now, it should be abundantly clear that the US, regardless of its current presidential administration or the composition of the US Congress, is agreement incapable, and that nations faced by its decades-spanning global-spanning pursuit of primacy must balance strategies to defend against it with a means of avoiding a dangerous spiraling into escalation.

Making Real Sense of US Foreign Policy

For observers trying to make sense of successive US proposals, it would be useful to consider the various layers of US policy.

These layers include (1.) the most shallow, almost meaningless rhetoric, propaganda, and political theater, (2.) that of ongoing US military operations, posture, and preparations, (3.) corporate-financier policymaking taking place within the halls of well-established think tanks where papers are transformed into bills by teams of lawyers before being sent to Washington by lobbyists merely to be signed off on, and (4.) the deepest layers where principal motivations of maintaining US primacy over the globe and an urgent desire to confront and dismantle “collective internationalism” or “multipolrism” drive all other policies.

A focus on and analysis of the upper layer of rhetoric, propaganda, and political theater will consistently lead to confusion, disastrously failed predictions, and an overall general inability to understand US policy, motivations, and interests.

By diving deeper into these other, more relevant layers, the deliberate confusion created at the surface can be cut through, and a deep, fundamental understanding of US power, its actual intentions, methods, and motivations can be achieved.

It also equips those targeted by US policy with the best chance of formulating realistic strategies to defend themselves against both the deception that accompanies it, and the dangers of the treachery those deceptions are meant to distract away from.

Layer 1: Rhetoric, Propaganda, Political Theater

The US is only talking “peace” in the first place because of Russia’s objective success on the battlefield, just as conditions in 2014-2015 forced the US and its European proxies to talk “peace” ahead of the Minsk 1 and 2 agreements.

Otherwise, just as was the case in Syria in 2024 when an opportunity presented itself to overthrow the Syrian government and fully politically capture the Syrian Arab Republic, the US and its proxies would pursue an uncompromising policy seeking to inflict maximum cost to its designated adversaries.

In this first, superficial layer, the US performs with its proxies, including both Ukraine and the rest of Europe, a form of political theater meant to compartmentalize the means through which it will both shape disingenuous agreements with Russia regarding Ukraine, and the means by which it and its proxies will inevitably violate any agreement Russia accepts.

First and foremost among Washington’s intended violations will be the creation and implementation of a “European and non-European” force intending to enter into Ukraine. The theater of “disagreement” between the US and its Ukrainian and European proxies allows the US to propose and if possible implement a “peace deal,” while Ukraine and Europe can take responsibility for violating it, affording the US plausible deniability while still enjoying the benefits of a frozen conflict and a US-planned “European and non-European” force now standing between Russia and any potential restart of its SMO.

The US also performs this theater within its own political system. A proposal made by the “Trump administration” is automatically attacked by his supposed opponents in the Democratic Party, prompting Trump supporters to likewise automatically support the proposal regardless of its contents and its contradiction of the very promises made by US President Donald Trump during campaigning in 2024.

Even within the Trump administration itself this theater is performed. More “aggressive” members of President Trump’s cabinet take responsibility for both a proposal at odds with President Trump’s 2024 campaign promises, while more “reasonable” voices, like Vice President JD Vance, pretend to uphold those promises despite the administration's blatant violation of them, preserving at least some public support and hope despite the obviously opposite direction the Trump administration has headed in.

Layer 2: Operational Reality

Operational reality includes the actual actions of the United States in regards to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

The US in 2014 politically captured and now completely controls Ukraine politically, militarily, and economically.

The US, through its operational base in Wiesbaden, Germany, controls every aspect of the ongoing war, forming the very top of Ukraine’s armed forces’ chain of command, overseeing everything from devising high-level strategy, to selecting individual Russian targets on the battlefield and even deep within Russian territory itself.

The US, since 2014, has also taken over, rebuilt, and now directs every aspect of Ukraine’s intelligence capabilities, as the NY Times would reveal in its 2024 article, “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin.”

The US still maintains tens of thousands of troops across Europe, overseeing US policy that includes militarizing NATO and even non-NATO members along Russia’s own borders in the same manner it did regarding Ukraine from 2014 onward, provoking this conflict in the first place.

All of this objectively continues regardless of the rhetoric, propaganda, and political theater taking place in the above layer, indicating much more accurately US intentions than any amount of political assurances, promises, or proposed agreements.

Layer 3: Corporate-Financier-Funded Policymaking

Deeper still are the policy papers laying out the strategy guiding Washington’s global operational reality, including its continued hostility, encroachment upon, and encirclement of Russia - again - regardless of its rhetoric, propaganda, political theater, or promises.

US operational realities regarding Russia specifically have been explicitly laid out in the 2019 RAND Corporation paper, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground,” which proposed the now ongoing US proxy war with Russia in Ukraine through, “Measure 1: Provide Lethal Aid to Ukraine,” noting it would:

Expanding U.S. assistance to Ukraine, including lethal military assistance, would likely increase the costs to Russia, in both blood and treasure, of holding the Donbass region. More Russian aid to the separatists and an additional Russian troop presence would likely be required, leading to larger expenditures, equipment losses, and Russian casualties. The latter could become quite controversial at home, as it did when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

The paper also proposed pressuring Russia all along its periphery and even beyond its near-abroad with measures like, “promote regime change in Belarus,” “exploit tensions in the South Caucasus,” and even “reduce Russian influence in Central Asia,” and “increase support to the Syrian rebels.”

The paper also proposed economic measures including, “hinder petroleum exports,” “reduce natural gas exports and hinder pipeline expansions,” “impose sanctions,” and "enhance Russian brain drain,” all measures the US has since implemented and are still implementing - spanning the Obama, Trump, Biden, and now second Trump administrations.

Again, despite whatever these various administrations said publicly or promised Russia privately, policy papers like RAND Corporation’s “Extending Russia” constituted the actual blueprint driving US policy toward Russia regardless, manifesting itself in operational reality both past and present.

Worse still is the larger picture such policies targeting Russia fit into.

In a 2018 US Naval War College Review paper titled, “A Maritime Blockade Against China,” Russia is identified as a substantial obstacle against any successful containment and/or blockade of China primarily because of its large energy production capacity, its long, shared border with China, and ongoing construction of pipelines to supply this energy to China.

Even with a successful maritime blockade of China along with the targeting and destruction of China’s Belt and Road Initiative land routes, Russian energy exports to China would still make a successful US blockade difficult. Thus, far beyond long-standing policies of containing Russia itself, doing so fits in with a much more urgent and deeply-desired policy of containing China.

Secretary Hegseth even mentioned the urgency with which the US must pivot to contain China in his February directive to Europe earlier this year.

Even if Russia were to concede entirely to the US in all aspects regarding Ukraine, unless it likewise conceded in terms of cutting off or even adopting a hostile posture toward China, the US would continue its encroachment upon Russia’s periphery far beyond just Ukraine.

The RAND Corporation and other policy think tanks, hardly independent institutions, are instead funded and directed by corporations and financial institutions representing the most powerful, influential interests from across the collective West including arms manufacturers, big-oil, the pharmaceutical industry, big-tech, banks, equity firms, and more. This leads to a deeper layer still.

Layer 4: Principal Corporate-Financier Objectives

If these policy think tanks are driven by large corporate-financier interests, what drives these interests?

The answer is the perpetual pursuit of power and profit, which is institutionalized by principles like “shareholder primacy,” demanding the maximization of shareholder wealth. An infinite desire for profit and power within a finite or even sometimes shrinking population and likewise finite markets means eliminating any and all competition - not only within the United States itself through a process of consolidation and monopoly, but all across the entire planet - demanding access and monopolies over the populations and market shares of all nations on planet earth - including Russia.

The ultimate expression of these principles and their impact on Russia took place during the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the US-European plundering of the nascent Russian Federation. Drives to dismantle purpose-driven state enterprises and “privatize” them before stripping and selling them off for profit rendered millions impoverished and with dim prospects.

The promises of “free market capitalism” never availed themselves to the Russian public, just as they have failed to avail themselves to others across the former Soviet Union’s members “warmed” by the glow of Western capitalism for decades since.

It was the current political interests now running Russia including President Putin and his political allies who reestablished Russian sovereignty, reestablished policies, institutions, and industry shifting priorities back closer to purpose over profit, that has led to the subsequent reemergence of the Russian Federation into the global power it is today.

From Wall Street and Washington’s perspective, this is an obstacle to their principal objectives of pursuing power and profit and thus why Russia (along with many other nations constituting the multipolar world - especially China) has been designated an “adversary” and has been set upon by decades-spanning policies aimed and encroaching upon, encircling, and ultimately up-ending them just as the Soviet Union had been and other nations like Syria, Libya, Iraq, and most recently Nepal have been much more recently.

Until these principal objectives change (and they haven’t), the policy they drive the creation of will not, nor will the operational realities of these policies being implemented.

The only thing that will change will be the rhetoric, propaganda, and political theater used to distract and disarm both the global public and decisionmakers around the world from this reality to afford additional space, time, and opportunity for their further advancement.

A full analysis of US foreign policy must extend through all of these layers, consistently building understanding upon the first principles of how US foreign policy is actually created and why. Focusing on the top-most superficial lawyer of rhetoric, propaganda, and political theater gives no more understanding of geopolitical realities than studying the waves in an ocean reveals all the many millions of organisms, currents, and features laying far below them.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Al Qaeda in the White House and its Implications Far Beyond it

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 03:56:00 -0800

November 18, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - In perhaps 20 years’ time, the Western media will reflect back on the radical shifts in narratives surrounding the head of Al Qaeda in Syria, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani now rebranded and presented as “Ahmed al-Sharaa,” who recently visited the White House and posed for pictures side-by-side an eagerly grinning US President Donald Trump.

Al-Jonali’s rebranding follows that of the terrorist organization he nominally heads, most recently referred to as “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham” (HTS) but previously known as Jabhat al-Nusra, a notorious terrorist organization heading the US-engineered proxy war against the government, military, and people of the now decimated and divided Syrian Arab Republic.

Side-by-side with the likewise US-sponsored “Islamic State” (ISIS), HTS openly documented its war crimes spanning the 2011-2024 period the US proxy war unfolded.

By 2025, however, like al-Jolani himself, the terrorist organization he headed previously featured on the US State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, was inexplicably removed.

The Washington Post in its recent article, “Syrian president meets with Trump in White House after unlikely ascent,” depicts the rise of al-Jolani as “improbable,” noting his journey from “al-Qaeda to the West Wing.”

In reality, this was an entirely probable, even inevitable outcome - considering the history of US state sponsorship of terrorism, al-Qaeda in particular, and the circular pattern depicting the terrorist front as both freedom fighters and villains spanning decades of US proxy wars and outright wars of aggression from Afghanistan in the 1980s to Syria today.

As in the Past, So Too in the Present…

Short memories are shocked by recent developments, but considering the trajectory of another infamous al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, recent developments seem as natural as the sun rising and setting daily.

In 2013, Business Insider published an article reflecting this trajectory. Titled, “This Mind-Boggling Profile Of Osama Bin Laden Came Out Exactly 20 Years Ago Today,” would exclaim:

This article from Dec. 6, 1993, by Robert Fisk of The Independent with the title "Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace" is stunning to consider 20 years later.

Osama bin Laden, fresh off the US-backed mujahedin's victory over Russia in 1989, flew his men, materials, and money down to Sudan, ostensibly to start public works projects.

It then notes:

The piece is fascinating because it is a positive profile of a man who would become a global terrorist mastermind.

Al-Jolani’s career mirrors that of Osama Bin Laden. Just as a mirrored reflection shows a similar but reverse reflection - al-Jonali has gone from a “terrorist mastermind” with a 10 million USD bounty on his head the US only recently withdrew, to an open ally in America’s continued war for primacy over the Middle East and beyond.

Just as Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were originally created and sponsored by the United States government to wage proxy war against its designated adversaries including the Soviet Union (later, against the Russian Federation), China (particularly in Xinjiang), and their partners, al-Jolani and al-Qaeda today (along with ISIS and other extremist organizations) have been and will continue to be used to wage proxy war or serve as a pretext for actual war against Russia, China, and other nations investing in a multipolar future.

Bigger Picture: Syria as an Epicenter for Exporting US-Sponsored Terrorism

It is abundantly clear the US will continue backing al-Jolani and the terrorist network now posing as Syria’s new “armed forces” - not to defend Syria - but to continue the fight against US-targeted nations and organizations across the region including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, and even Iran itself.

The US will also seek to export Syrian-based extremism far beyond the region, including all along Russia’s and especially China’s peripheries.

Among al-Jolani’s extremist forces includes the so-called, “Turkestan Islamic Party” (TIP) also known as the “East Turkestan Islamic Movement” (ETIM).

TIP/ETIM was disingenuously removed from the US Foreign Terrorist Organizations list in 2020 specifically to provide it with wider and more overt support.

DW in its article titled, “US removes China-condemned group from terror list,” would claim TIP/ETIM was removed as a terrorist organization by the US government, “because, for more than a decade, there has been no credible evidence that ETIM continues to exist.”

This, however, is untrue. The US Department of Defense (now "Department of War”) admitted to having carried out airstrikes against the group in Afghanistan only 2 years prior to its delisting, NBC News would report. This is just one of many instances of US narratives and who it designates as “terrorists” changes based solely on what advances US foreign policy, not any sort of actual metric based on national or international security.

Now, the organization the US government claims no longer exists, is in Syria and constitutes an entire military unit alongside al-Jolani’s HTS, having aided in the overthrow of the Syrian government late last year. Since then, it has announced ambitions to expand its operations far beyond Syria.

The London Telegraph in a December 13, 2024 article titled, “Uyghur fighters in Syria vow to come for China next,” claims “a Uyghur militant group that helped to topple Bashar-al Assad has vowed to take the fight to China.”

The ability to do so - “take the fight to China” - is only possible with continued US government backing including training, weapons, and logistics via regional proxies including Turkey, who prepared and incorporated the militants in the invasion force that toppled Syria’s government in the first place.

The US is also clearly rehabilitating the terrorist organization, its HTS partners, and HTS’ leader, al-Jolani himself - both enabling greater, more open support from the US for these terrorist attacks and enabling the US to condemn any measures China and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) partners attempt to take to stop it.

Short of fighting in China itself, the Telegraph in an accompanying video would note, “can TIP take the fight to China, home to the world’s largest military with 2 million active troops? It’s easier said than done. Still, TIP could target Chinese projects or embassies abroad.”

This fits into an already ongoing US-sponsored campaign of targeting Chinese BRI projects across Eurasia including in Baluchistan, Pakistan and Myanmar.

An army of well-trained, well-armed experienced terrorists fresh from the battlefield in Syria and now being recognized and more openly backed by the US directly, are poised to significantly escalate what is already a US war on China by proxy along the length of Beijing’s BRI and ultimately aimed at China itself.

This in turn fits into a long-standing US global policy of eliminating all rivals through persuasion, coercion, sanctions, US-sponsored sedition, terrorism, and military confrontation – by proxy and directly.

The fall of Syria and other nations like it contribute toward a more dangerous world where larger and more stable nations may be targeted, undermined, and toppled next.

Going Beyond Counter-Terrorism to Preempt US Aggression

Among the most effective and so far unanswered weapons the United States government wields is its dominion over global information space and its global-spanning network of political interference and capture, centered around the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and adjacent government and corporate-funded foundations.

Russian and Chinese military and economic power continues to rise, and both nations have successfully protected their respective information spaces from US interference or capture. However, the US continues, unopposed, undermining nations along both Russia and China’s peripheries, politically capturing nations and transforming them into political and even military battering rams against both targeted nations.

Syria’s collapse in the first place began through a decades-spanning process of politically undermining Syria’s previous government and through the US-sponsored rise of opposition groups including armed terrorist organizations, funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) up until the 1980s when the NED assumed many of the CIA’s regime change roles.

While China may have successfully uprooted US-sponsored extremism in Xinjiang, the US continues arming, backing, and promoting these same extremists out of China’s reach in recently decimated Syria and even closer to home in neighboring Pakistan and Myanmar.

Through Washington’s control over information space outside of China, and the political capture and control this grants the US, these terrorists are being created, backed, positioned inside targeted or captured nations, and then presented as “freedom fighters” in much the same way the US has presented HTS, and decades before, the “anti-Soviet warrior,” Osama Bin Laden.

Russia and China aid partner nations in the defense of their traditional national security domains – air, land, and sea – but have failed to export their own domestic success in securing a 21st century national security domain – information space.

Should Russia and China succeed in doing this, Washington will be denied one of its last and most effective weapons used to sustain global hegemony, greatly reducing or even eliminating the US’ ability to build armies of global-spanning terrorists upending peace and stability, and making multipolarism inevitable rather than a mere possibility.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

US Plans for China Blockade Continue Taking Shape

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 03:54:00 -0800

November 10, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - In 2018, the US Naval War College Review published a paper titled, “A Maritime Oil Blockade Against China – Tactically Tempting But Strategically Flawed.” It was only one of many over preceding years discussing the details of implementing a maritime blockade as part of a larger encirclement and containment strategy of China.

At first glance the paper looks like US policy thinking considered, then moved past the idea of blockading China. Instead, the paper merely listed a number of obstacles impeding such a strategy in 2018 - obstacles that would need to be removed if such a strategy were to be viable in the near or intermediate future - and obstacles US policymakers have been removing ever since.

More contemporary papers published, including those among the pages of the US Naval Institute (here and here), have updated and refined not just an emerging strategy to theoretically confront and contain China, but a plan of action taking tangible shape.

Cold War Continuity of Agenda

Throughout the Cold War and ever since its conclusion the US’ singular foreign policy objective has been to maintain American hegemony over the globe established at the end of the World Wars. A 1992 New York Times article titled “U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring no Rivals Develop” made it clear the US would actively prevent the emergence of any nation or groups of nations from contesting American primacy worldwide.

In recent years this has included preventing the reemergence of Russia as well as the rise of China. It also involves surrounding both nations with arcs of chaos and/or confrontation - either through the destruction of neighboring countries through political subversion, or the capture of these nations by the US and their transformation into battering rams to be used against both nations.

Ukraine is an extreme example of this policy in action. The US is also transforming both the Philippines and the Chinese island province of Taiwan into similar proxies vis-a-vis China.

Beyond this - the US seeks to prevent the majority of nations currently outside US dominion from joining with and contributing to the multipolar world order proposed by nations like Russia and China.

This strategy of coercion, destabilization, political capture, as well as proxy war and outright war has been used to target both Russia and China directly, their neighbors, and a growing list of nations far beyond their near abroad.

Strengths and Weaknesses of American Primacy

Enabling this strategy is America’s global-spanning military presence facilitated by its “alliance network.” This network of obedient client regimes both hosts US military forces and serves as an extension of US military, economic, and increasingly military industrial power. US “allies” often pursue US geopolitical objectives at their own expense.

Again, an explicit example of this is Ukraine which is locked in proxy war with Russia, threatening its own self-preservation as a means of - as US policymakers described in a 2019 RAND Corporation paper - “extending Russia.”

While conflicts like that unfolding in Ukraine or the US-backed military build-up in the Philippines or on Taiwan has exposed a critical weakness of the United States - its lagging military industrial capacity vis-a-vis either Russia or China - let alone both nations - the US has demonstrated the ability to compensate through geopolitical agility the multipolar world is struggling to address.

This includes the ability of the US to mire a targeted nation in conflict in one location while moving resources across its global-spanning military-logistical networks toward pressure points in other locations, overextending the targeted nation and achieving success in at least one of the multiple pressure points targeted.The US successfully did this through its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine which tied Russia up sufficiently for the US to finally succeed in the overthrow of the Syrian government where Russian forces had previously thwarted US-sponsored proxy war and regime change.

It also includes the ability of the US to target partner or potential partner nations of Russia and China through economic, political, or even military means in ways Russia and China are unable to defend against - including through political subversion facilitated through America's near monopoly over global information space.

These advantages the US still possesses also make potential maritime blockades very difficult for Russia and China to defend against.

Russian Energy Shipments as a Beta-Test for Blockading China

France recently announced seizing a ship accused of being part of Russia’s “ghost” or “shadow” fleet - ships refusing to heed unilateral sanctions placed by the US and its client states on Russian energy shipments.

This was just one of several first steps toward what may materialize into a wider and more aggressive interdiction or blockade of Russian energy shipments. This may also be a beta-test for implementing a long-desired maritime blockade on China.

A rapid, full-scale blockade would cause energy prices to spike and could blowback to the US as negative economic consequences. By incrementally pressuring Russian energy shipments, the US can slowly adjust energy markets in an incremental manner to cushion a sudden shock the public would immediately notice and potentially react to.

Russia and the rest of the multipolar world’s response to this increasingly aggressive targeting of maritime shipping may determine whether or not the US adopts the strategy of maritime blockades on a wider scale.

Setting the Stage for a Blockade of China Has Already Begun

The 2018 US Naval War College Review paper lays out the realities of a potential blockade against China in 2018, noting the various opportunities and risks associated with such a strategy.

The paper notes that, “China’s reliance on seaborne oil supplies has risen steadily over the past decade and could rise further as domestic production declines,” and that, “the imported oil passes overwhelmingly through the Strait of Malacca and a handful of other passages that the U.S. Navy could seal off effectively.”

It also talks extensively about a “distant blockade,” it says would be “imposed far from the Chinese coast, reducing the threat to U.S. forces from Chinese A2/AD systems.”

This recognizes China’s growing military capabilities - military capabilities US policymakers admit are being developed and deployed to defend China, not project military power abroad - a fact US policymakers openly seek to exploit through America’s existing, global-spanning network of military power projection.

The paper includes a map marking various maritime chokepoints the US Navy then and today is capable of closing off beyond the reach of Chinese military power, backed by the growing US military footprint in the region, particularly across the Philippines, Japan (as well as its island province of Okinawa), as well as the Chinese island province of Taiwan itself.

It also mentions ongoing efforts by China to establish land routes to circumvent these maritime chokepoints including the Myanmar-China oil pipeline, claiming:

A distant blockade also would need to interdict the Myanmar–China oil pipeline, which eventually could move as much as 440 kbd of crude oil from Kyaukpyu in coastal Myanmar to Yunnan Province in southwest China. Preventing tankers from off-loading at the Kyaukpyu terminal would require few, if any, naval platforms to remain on-site. The area could be declared an exclusion zone for the duration of a conflict, and if the Myanmar authorities failed to comply the facility could be disabled via air strikes, aerial mining, or other kinetic action. In short, U.S. forces likely would be able to neutralize rapidly China’s overland routes for seaborne oil imports to avoid the Strait of Malacca and other choke points farther east and prevent them from diverting forces needed to seal other maritime ingress routes.

Far from just theoretical war planning, this Myanmar-China oil pipeline has since been targeted by US-backed militants operating inside Myanmar, fighting the central government and using the conflict as cover to strike at, compromise, and even destroy Chinese investments across the Southeast Asian country.

In February 2022, US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded opposition media organization, The Irrawaddy, reported in its article, “China-Backed Pipeline Facility Damaged in Myanmar Resistance Attack,” that:

An off-take station of the China-backed oil and gas pipelines was damaged when a local resistance group attacked regime forces guarding the facility in Mandalay Region…

And that:

Anti-Chinese sentiment swelled in Myanmar following the military coup last February, with many people believing Beijing had a hand in the takeover. At that time, there were calls for a boycott of Chinese products, along with calls to blow up the pipelines if China refused to condemn the regime.

The calls prompted China to urge the regime to increase security for the pipelines. Since March last year, the regime has assigned extra forces to protect them.

Likewise, the US has been backing extremists in southwest Pakistan to target the Chinese-built China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) over the course of several years spanning the Obama, first Trump, Biden, and now second Trump administrations (including in 2021, 2024, and 2025).

In other nations, like the Southeast Asian Kingdom of Thailand, US-sponsored opposition leaders like billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit have openly campaigned to stop Chinese infrastructure projects like high-speed rail lines as part of slowing down, stopping, or even reversing progress for China’s BRI network and thus eliminating the BRI as an alternative to circumvent a US-imposed maritime blockade on Chinese shipping.

The 2018 paper also identifies Russia as a primary alternative source for Chinese energy imports - which is one of the reasons the US is waging its ongoing proxy war against Russia through Ukraine and why the US is overseeing an expanding campaign to attack and destroy Russian refineries and other forms of energy infrastructure across Russia.

In other words, while US policymakers envisioned an opportunity for using US military power to attack and dismantle China’s Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure amid a US-Chinese conflict and other measures to cut China off from crucial energy imports including from Russia, since then, the US has used armed extremists it funds and backs inside nations hosting Chinese BRI projects to begin attacking these projects before any direct US-Chinese conflict commences - together with a dangerously large proxy war being fought against China’s ally, Russia, to complicate or cut off significant alternative energy imports.

The paper concludes that any blockade should not be seen as a single, independent solution to eliminating an adversary and that the US must also continue building up the forces necessary to wage war against China as well.

Since the paper was published, the US has pursued both continued preparations for a maritime blockade of China itself, as well as build up a number of regional proxies to wage war against China as the US wages proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, and increasingly, through the rest of Europe.

While this reality continues to take shape, political rhetoric in Washington attempts to disarm China and its allies from taking action to prepare for the inevitable confrontation the US is preparing for by creating the impression Washington seeks to “retreat” from the “Indo-Pacific” region to defend the “homeland” in the Western Hemisphere.

While some in the public and even across the alternative media have fallen for this rhetoric, it is unlikely anyone in Beijing, Moscow, or other BRICS capitals could be so naive - especially as these empty words from Washington are overshadowed by the US’ continued physical militarization of China’s periphery, continued regime change operations along China’s borders - most recently in Nepal - and the continued US proxy war against Russia aimed specifically at crippling its energy production capabilities - a key prerequisite for a successful maritime blockade of China.

To understand Washington's strategy toward China, one should not look to the political rhetoric of "retreat" or "homeland defense" in the Western Hemisphere, but rather to the tangible actions taking place across the Asia-Pacific and beyond - the meticulous encirclement of China's periphery, the sustained attacks on its critical overland energy and trade links (BRI/CPEC), the calculated incapacitation of Russia as a potential energy supplier, and the establishment of local proxy forces (the Philippines, Japan, separatists on Taiwan) prepared to wage war.

Far from an abstract or "flawed" concept relegated to think-tank papers, the maritime oil blockade - or wider general blockade against China is being incrementally prepared in real-time. By systematically removing the very obstacles noted in the 2018 Naval War College Review paper, the US is demonstrating a clear, unwavering commitment to a multi-layered strategy of containment, coercion, and confrontation designed not just to prepare for conflict, but to make that conflict both inevitable and successful for the singular goal of maintaining global American hegemony.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

Future Global Order Pivots on Ukraine Proxy War

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Sun, 9 Nov 2025 03:08:00 -0800

October 21, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Russian forces in recent weeks have been increasingly encircling the cities of Pokrovsk in central Donetsk while approaching Lyman and Siversk further to the north. Looking at various live mapping projects tracking the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, nascent pincers appear to be emerging in what some analysts believe could be a large-scale encirclement of what remains of Ukraine’s “fortress belt” in the Donbass region.

Comprising a number of heavily-defended built-up urban centers from Kostiantynovka and extending northward toward Kramatorsk and Slovyansk closer to Lyman, Ukraine’s remaining fortress belt likely comprises thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of Ukrainian forces. Their encirclement by Russian forces would deal a catastrophic defeat to Ukraine and its US sponsors and signify the achievement of a major Russian objective amid its ongoing Special Military Operation (SMO) - the full capture of the Donbass region.

Over the next weeks and months, the fate of this military operation will be decided, both on the battlefield in the Donbass region, far beyond it in the strategic depths of both Ukraine and Russia, as well as geopolitically worldwide.

Realities of a Major Donbass “Encirclement”

While many may imagine a World War 2-style physical encirclement of Ukraine’s fortress belt by rolling columns of Russian armored and infantry units, the encirclement will much more likely take the form of an operational, rather than physical envelopment.

Russian ground forces will continue their incremental advance along the line of contact, approaching Ukrainian-held towns and cities, besieging them, and eventually taking them, ensuring salients that emerge are well-protected from Ukrainian-counter attack as well as from the sort of operational envelopment Russia itself has been and seeks to continue to impose on Ukrainian forces.

Instead, Russian long-range warfare capabilities and drone warfare in particular - which has evolved rapidly in terms of both quality and quantity - will be able to target Ukraine’s line of communications along the entire rear of its remaining fortress belt. With the inevitable fall of Pokrovsk to Russian forces in central Donetsk and Russian forces approaching Lyman in the north, Russian FPV (first-person view) and fiber optic drones will be in range of virtually everything in between.

The encirclement of Pokrovsk and the emerging salient extending north reaching almost directly west of Kostiantynovka has already compromised logistics for Kostiantynovka itself. As Russian forces consolidate control in this region, drone operations targeting logistics for Kramatorsk and Slavyansk will become increasingly effective together with Russian forces doing likewise while moving from north to south near Lyman and Siversk.

The closer these pincers get to one another, the more effective operational encirclement will become and the more precarious Ukrainian positions will become in between them.

Just as Pokrovsk itself does not require complete physical encirclement by Russian forces to severely compromise Ukrainian logistics and thus undermine defensive positions inside the city, Russia does not necessarily need to physically encircle the Kramatorsk-Slavyansk section of Ukraine’s fortress belt to severely compromise both logistics for it and military positions within it.

In some ways, an operational encirclement would be preferable to a physical envelopment.

Because Russia is fighting what is essentially a war of attrition seeking to demilitarize Ukraine rather than focusing on the rapid seizure of territory, it seeks to force Ukraine to commit huge amounts of reserves to Pokrovsk and elsewhere along the fortress belt to meet well-established Russian military positions and long-range fires.

A rapid Russian advance toward the Dnieper River or beyond, would be costly and would afford what remains of Ukraine’s forces the ability to operate closer and closer to their own base of material support along its border with NATO. Instead, Ukraine is forced to continuously send troops and material to the current line of contact where Russia is destroying it.

Western Actions On and Beyond the Battlefield

The Western media now accepts that Russia is both fighting and decisively winning this war of attrition and that there is little the US and its European client states can do to stop it - at least in terms of continued military support for Ukrainian forces.

This is why the US and Europe have insisted on a ceasefire and what would essentially be a “Minsk 3.0” freeze during which the collective West would expand its own military industrial production, and just like during the first Minsk agreements, rebuild Ukraine’s armed forces for the next round of hostilities.

Russia’s rejection of a ceasefire and continued successful military operation inside Ukraine has forced the US to both escalate on the battlefield and turn toward means beyond the battlefield in Ukraine to force a freeze or, short of that, raise the cost as high as possible for Russia to continue its SMO.

One option has been the threat of sending Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. Not a war-winning capability in and of itself, its introduction would once again incrementally increase the cost of continuing the conflict for Russia forcing it to reorganize its air defenses to defend deeper inside Russian territory and possibly slowing down the progress of operations along the front line. The missiles could also perhaps strike at and inflict larger-scale damage on Russian military industrial and energy production infrastructure than ongoing US-directed drone and missile strikes already have.

Together with this escalation on the battlefield, the US has also threatened a range of sanctions and tariffs aimed both at Russia itself as well as at its closest trading partners, especially India and China.

The threats are aimed at forcing India or China (ideally both) to choose access to US markets and its US dollar-dominated global financial system over trade with Russia, thus isolating Russia and making it infinitely more difficult for Russia to continue its military operations in Ukraine. Should India and China cave to US demands and Russia find itself isolated or even collapse economically and politically, this would further isolate both India and China themselves - a key component of US strategic sequencing and its ultimate objective of preventing all rivals (ally or adversary) from rising to prominence.

Should India and China stand firm, the US imposed sanctions and tariffs would do short-term damage to both India and China but also to the US itself. Washington’s significant escalation in terms of sweeping sanctions and tariffs potentially accelerates the long-term trend toward a multipolar economic order. T

The immediate challenge to nations like India and China - being cut off from the US dollar and Western markets - forces a rapid diversification of trade and financial settlement systems which has already been ongoing since the inception of BRICS. This additional US strategic pressure, intended to inflict short-term pain on Russia, inadvertently incentivizes and hastens the development of non-Western alternatives, including to the US dollar and US-dominated payment systems.

The battle for Ukraine's fortress belt is thus a microcosm of the larger US proxy war in Ukraine against Russia - a slow, grinding military operation that dictates massive geopolitical consequences. The outcome of this battle will likely cement the overall outcome of the Ukraine conflict itself. More broadly, the US response, pivoting from military containment to economic warfare against Russia’s global partners, confirms that this conflict has always been just one part of a much larger US strategy toward its ultimate aim of eliminating rivals and maintaining primacy worldwide.

The coming months will be pivotal not just in terms of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, but in terms of the global order that emerges as part of the larger conflict the US is fighting against not just Russia but the entire multipolar world.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

US Threatens Russia with Tomahawk Cruise Missiles Amid Latest Escalation

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Sun, 9 Nov 2025 03:06:00 -0800

October 17, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - US President Donald Trump in recent weeks has repeatedly mentioned the possibility of sending long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, following a now-revealed US-directed drone campaign targeting Russian energy production deep inside Russian borders, all after US attempts to deceive Russia into a “Minsk 3.0” freeze has categorically failed.

The predictable escalation confirms for Russia the necessity of continuing military operations into the near and intermediate future to end the conflict on the battlefield in Ukraine rather than at the negotiation table.

The introduction of Tomahawk cruise missiles will constitute a further escalation amid a war current US President Trump both accused previous US President Joe Biden of unnecessarily starting and had campaigned for office in the first place by promising to end within “24 hours.”

It is also a war the US continues escalating current US Secretary of State Marco Rubio himself has described as a US proxy war fought against Russia through Ukraine.

While Russia has reacted to each US provocation with patience and persistence in pursuit of its national security objectives, the Tomahawk cruise missile represents another step closer to provoking direct conflict between Russia and either Europe and/or the US itself.

Predictable Escalation Amid Predictable Continuity of Agenda

Despite claims of wanting to end the conflict, the Trump administration had no intention of ever doing so, and simply sought to freeze it as it prioritized containing China before circling back to restart hostilities with Russia once Ukraine’s battered armed forces were reconstituted and Western military industrial production sufficiently ramped up.

Even before the 2024 election, then US Vice President nominee JD Vance simply prioritized war with China over proxy war with Russia and sought the creation of a “heavily fortified demilitarized zone” at the existing line of contact - not actually resolving the conflict - so the US could divert resources toward confrontation with China.

Following the 2024 US presidential election, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in a February directive delivered to Europe in Brussels told European nations to double down on both military industrial production and arms shipments to Ukraine as well as prepare European and non-European troops to enter into Ukraine to enforce what was essentially a “Minsk 3.0” freeze to the conflict despite explicitly claiming the directive “must not be Minsk 3.0.”

Secretary Hegseth also mentioned Russian energy production and its role in funding the “Russian war machine,” claiming:

To further enable effective diplomacy and drive down energy prices that fund the Russian war machine, President Trump is unleashing American energy production and encouraging other nations to do the same. Lower energy prices coupled with more effective enforcement of energy sanctions will help bring Russia to the table.

While Secretary Hegseth publicly mentioned American energy production and sanctions as means to lower energy prices and target Russian energy production, the Financial Times has since revealed that Ukrainian drones striking at Russian energy production to further this stated US policy objective were overseen by the US itself and was enabled by US intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) without which such drone strikes would not be possible.

While the FT article confirmed the US’ role in drone strikes deep inside Russia, it was by no means a revelation.

The New York Times last year admitted that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deployed its officers to Ukraine directly after the US overthrew the elected government in 2014. Since then, it has built a network of bases, trained entire units of Ukrainian intelligence agents, and has directed Ukrainian intelligence operations - including throughout the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO) beginning in 2022.

Since the CIA oversees Ukrainian intelligence units like the SBU involved in drone strikes on Russia, utilizing US ISR,the US is all but carrying out these strikes itself.

This means that as US President Trump invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to the US state of Alaska in August for “peace talks,” the Trump administration had already initiated a deep strike drone campaign targeting Russian energy production in an attempt to cripple both Russia’s energy industry and Russia’s economy, in the hopes of forcing Moscow to concede to a ceasefire under a defacto “Minsk 3.0” framework.

Having failed to achieve this, the US is continuing escalations further, including with the threat of deploying Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine to extend the range and impact of ongoing US-directed deep strikes into Russia together with growing threats to the maritime shipments of Russian energy exports.

The Tomahawk: Dangerous but Not Decisive

The Tomahawk cruise missile, with a range of up to 2,500 km, could strike targets well beyond Moscow itself, including as far as the legendary Uralvagonzavod tank factory in Russia’s city of Nizhny Tagil. It also places a larger number of Russian energy production facilities at risk - and for facilities already within range of Ukrainian drone and missile strikes, the Tomahawk possesses a much larger warhead with greater destructive capacity which could deal out potentially greater damage to these facilities.

Before the first Trump administration withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019, the Tomahawk missile was launched from surface naval vessels and submarines and played pivotal roles in US wars of aggression from the Gulf War in the 1990s, the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s, and the US wars on Libya and Syria from 2011 onward.

Following the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty, development and deployment of ground-launched missile systems capable of firing the Tomahawk began, producing the Typhon system currently deployed by the US Army including in the Philippines aimed at China, as well as the Long Range Fires (LRF) Launcher developed for testing by the US Marines until last year when the US Marines abandoned it.

Citing difficulties in using the LRF Launcher in austere conditions US Marines would likely operate in on islands across the Asia-Pacific region, the US Marines adopted the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) launching the smaller, shorter-range Naval Strike Missile. However, the working LRF Launchers are now being considered by the US Army for testing as early as next year, and are likely capable of being sent to Ukraine as the most likely candidate for launching Tomahawks into Russia.

The LFR Launcher uses only one Mk 41 vertical launching system (VLS) cell per launcher (versus 4 cells for the Typhon launcher) and would require reloading after firing each missile. Possibly used together with other truck-mounted prototypes in the US military’s inventory, only a small handful of Tomahawk missiles could be fired from Ukraine into Russia at a time.

Ordinarily, well-protected targets would require large numbers of Tomahawk missiles as demonstrated in the 2017 US strike on Syria’s Al Shayrat airfield involving up to 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Because salvos on this scale launched from ground launchers in Ukraine are unachievable, the US would likely combine the use of Tomahawk missiles together with Western air-launched cruise missiles, drones, and decoys. These less-capable systems would be sent in waves ahead of the Tomahawk missiles in an attempt to saturate Russian air defenses before the Tomahawks themselves are launched.

Similar tactics have been used with limited success in conjunction with Western air-launched cruise missiles like the British Storm Shadow and French equivalent (SCALP).

Like many other weapon systems the West has transferred to Ukraine over the course of the SMO, small-scale deployments of the Tomahawk could be expanded by sending more missiles and more improved and more numerous ground launcher systems in the near future.

Among these may be replacements the US Army is already seeking out for its existing Typhon system. Naval News in its article, “Oshkosh Ground-Based Tomahawk Launcher Breaks Cover,” reports on the development of a much more mobile and autonomous ground launcher capable of carrying up to 4 Tomahawk cruise missiles versus the currently deployed and very cumbersome Typhon and the more mobile but limited LRF Launcher. The article doesn’t mention when these systems may be available, but manned variants of these trucks could be developed and tested within a year or two, with autonomous systems being rolled out later, with the LRF Launcher used in the interim.

The real bottleneck has been and will continue to be the annual production rate of US munitions with the Tomahawk cruise missile being no exception.

Reuters in a recent article noted that only about 55 to 90 Tomahawk missiles are produced per year, compared to estimates of Russia’s equivalent Kalibr cruise missile ranging from 300-360 a year together with hundreds of other types of cruise missiles and tens of thousands of long-range strike drones like the Geran-2. Another Reuters article from 2023 noted that Russia had - at that point - fired a total of 7,400 missiles and 3,700 drones into Ukraine since the beginning of the SMO in 2022.

Considering the effect of Russia’s missile and drone campaign on Ukraine and the much larger geographical size of Russia and the much larger scale of Russian industry and energy production, an equal or greater number of missiles and drones would be required to significantly affect Russia’s military industrial and energy production on a similar or greater scale.

Reports vary regarding the impact of the ongoing US-directed deep strikes on Russian energy production. The introduction of Tomahawk cruise missiles would likely increase this impact, but to what extent remains to be seen.

With or Without Tomahawks, Escalation Continues

Whether the US deploys Tomahawks to Ukraine or not, the US will continue escalating its proxy war with Russia. As US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth laid out in February of this year, the US is urging Europe to prepare to fill the void created by Ukraine’s incrementally collapsing fighting capacity.

While the US seeks to redirect its resources toward its growing confrontation with China in the Asia-Pacific, it continues to oversee its proxy war in Ukraine - the latest example being the long-range drone strike campaign targeting Russia’s energy production facilities.

While many analysts agree there is little likelihood Ukraine and its Western sponsors can turn the tide in this conflict, it should be noted that as early as 2019 in a RAND Corporation paper titled, "Extending Russia,” it was made clear Ukraine had little chance of winning in the first place.

The goal, as the title of the paper suggests, was simply “extending Russia” along a number of pressure points, Ukraine being only one. Since the SMO began in 2022, the US has taken advantage of Russia’s commitment in Ukraine to topple the Syrian government amid a US regime-change war fought there previously stalled by Russian military intervention. The collapse of Syria has been used to pave the way toward direct US-Israeli conflict with Iran - a Russian ally - who now finds itself precariously isolated in the Middle East as well.

The ongoing attacks on Russia’s energy sector ( including possible use of Tomahawk cruise missiles) will, on their own, not “win” the war with Russia, but will contribute to this larger strategy of “extending Russia” even further.

Washington will continue its strategy of overextending Russia and attempting to pick apart its interests along its near abroad through a division of labor and strategic sequencing. At the same time, Russia will attempt to outpace this US strategy by continuing to expand its military and industrial capabilities along with its coordinated response with allies like China, North Korea, and Iran to first paralyze US interference across Eurasia and beyond, then roll it back.

Both the US and Russia are operating at the near limits of their material, military, and political power, playing to their respective strengths. While Russia’s strengths appear to lie in terms of military power and industrial production, the US excels as projecting its military power globally along with its still potent ability to politically coerce and capture targeted nations enabled by its near monopoly over global information space.

The future world order will be decided by which has greater staying power and utilizes their own strengths while neutralizing those of their adversary most effectively. Will the US and its network of client states match or exceed Russia’s military industrial power before Russia and its allies expand their traditional military and industrial expertise to effectively counter US political interference and its monopoly over information space? Only time will tell.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

US Sows Chaos Across Asia as it Aims for China

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Sun, 9 Nov 2025 03:04:00 -0800

September 30, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - In late May 2025 US Secretary of Defense (now called the “Secretary of War”) Pete Hegseth warned the world the US was in the process of implementing a division of labor in both Europe and the Middle East while pivoting its attention and all of the interference, instability, conflict, and even war that comes with it toward Asia.

More specifically, Secretary Hegseth stated, “we are reorienting toward deterring aggression by Communist China.”

By “deterring aggression by Communist China,” Secretary Hegseth meant preventing China from defending itself and the stability of the region it is located in from Washington’s attempt to maintain primacy over Asia from the other side of the planet.

Among the manufactured threats Secretary Hegseth cited as justification for US meddling in the Asia-Pacific (referred to as the “Indo-Pacific” by the US government) was China “invading Taiwan.”

Taiwan is recognized both under international law and by the US State Department itself as part of “One China.”

On the US State Department’s official website under, “U.S. Relations With Taiwan,” it states explicitly that, “the United States approach to Taiwan has remained consistent across decades and administrations. The United States has a longstanding one China policy,” and that, “we do not support Taiwan independence.”

In practice, however, the US maintains the political capture of Taiwan’s local administration, arms and politically supports it, while encouraging it to pursue separatism from the rest of China.

This, not “Chinese aggression,” is at the root of US-Chinese tensions, a modern-day continuation of Western colonialism over the Asia-Pacific region spanning generations. China’s growing economic and military power threatens to overturn centuries of Western hegemony.

This is the true “threat” Washington is reacting to - not unwarranted Chinese influence over its own region of the world, but the irreversible end of America’s unwarranted influence over the opposite side of the planet.

Turning Asia Upside Down

Despite hallucinations of a US “retreating” from Asia under the current Trump administration, the US is in the middle of region-wide destabilization carried out by the various tools of US political coercion and capture, namely the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID programs now continuing more quietly under the US State Department itself, and adjacent Western foundations like George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

Much in the same way the US targeted North Africa and the Middle East during the “Arab Spring” in 2011, it is now targeting first Indonesia with deadly riots disrupting the new BRICS member’s participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting which took place in early September, then toppling the government of Nepal right on India and China’s borders with equally deadly violence, and more recently targeting both the Philippines and border regions of India with the same “Gen Z” branded unrest.

By doing so, the US is shaping the region as part of a continued effort to encircle, contain, and undermine China itself.

Those married to the illusion of an America “retreating” from Asia have attempted to sell this recent unrest across Asia as “organic” and “spontaneous,” despite extensive evidence of US NED-funded organizations both leading and promoting the protests and an interim government now taking shape in Nepal in which half of the 8 ministers appointed by mid-September being drawn from US NED-funded fronts - many of which these interim ministers actually founded or directed.

These ministers include Om Prakash Aryal appointed Minister of Home Affairs, who served as a member advocate of the USAID, NED, and Open Society-funded Justice and Rights Institute - Nepal, Jagadish Kharel appointed Minister of Communications and IT who founded the USAID-funded Media Help Line organization, Mahabir Pun appointed Minister of Education, Science, and Technology who directed the USAID-funded National Innovation Centre, and Prasad Pariyar appointed Minister of Agriculture who directed the USAID, NED, CIA-proprietary The Asia Foundation, and Open Society-funded Samata Foundation.

Dr. Sangita Mishra who has been appointed Minister of Health previously served as director of the Paropakar Maternity and Women’s Hospital which regularly took USAID funding with US Embassy statements mentioning her by name during “hand-over ceremonies.” While this funding could be considered on its own potentially “innocent,” together with overtly US-backed figures being appointed alongside her indicates an overwhelmingly pro-US (and US-dependent) interim government taking shape in addition to the US-funded organizations that promoted and led the protests themselves.

In the Philippines, protests were led by Tindig Pilipinas, a member of the US NED-funded International Center for Innovation, Transformation and Excellence in Governance (INCITEGov) and promoted by US NED-funded media outlet Rappler, founded and directed by Maria Ressa who literally has her own webpage on the NED’s official website.

While the current government in the Philippines has been extensively servile to Washington at the expense of the Philippines itself, the unrest could serve as either a means to root out any independent political forces not yet subordinated by the US, or as a means of coercing the current government because it has hesitated to fulfill Washington’s increasingly dangerous demands in regards to confronting China.

US interference and the networks it uses to implement it span the entirety of Asia with additional unrest in other nations across the region all but inevitable.

Continuity of Agenda

Washington’s goal is to surround China with either hostile US-captured client regimes, or instability denying China political, economic, and even potentially military partners.

At the same time, the US continues transforming nations like South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines into militarized battering rams to both provoke China and potentially fight a proxy war against it in the same manner the US is currently using Ukraine and the rest of Europe to fight the Russian Federation.

All of this has taken place through a process spanning the entire 21st century regardless of who sits in the White House or who controls US Congress.

Under the current Trump administration, in the same late-May speech by Secretary Hegseth, he bragged about the development and deployment of US weapon systems specifically designed for conflict with China including the Navy/Marine Corps Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) designed for targeting naval vessels, as well as the Typhon missile system which was previously prohibited under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty President Donald Trump withdrew from during his first term in office.

The systematic unilateral withdrawal from arms control treaties and the subsequent development and deployment of previously prohibited weapons along both Russia and China’s periphery by both the Trump and Biden administrations demonstrate that the US - far from “retreating” - is engaged in a deliberate and methodical escalation toward containment and confrontation with both nations spanning multiple presidential administrations and continuing to this day.

Beyond developing and deploying weapons along China’s periphery, the US is coercing its client states in the region to divert public money away from social programs and infrastructure and toward arms manufacturing and maintenance facilities to sustain US conflict in the region otherwise inhibited by what US policymakers often refer to as the “tyranny of distance” - the reality of the US picking a fight with China on the other side of the planet from where the US and the source of its military industrial production is actually located in on a map.

Called the “Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience” (PIPIR), Secretary Hegseth described it as, “a U.S.-initiated multilateral forum of 14 allies and partners working with industry, capital providers, and key non-governmental stakeholders, to strengthen industrial resilience, expand our capacity, and accelerate deliveries,” involving aircraft and naval vessel repair facilities, the standardization of drones and input components across the region, and the production of US weapons like the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) used by M270 and HIMARS launch platforms.

PIPIR is meant to exploit US client states in the region to compensate for America’s own military industrial shortcomings back home as exposed amid its proxy war with Russia in Ukraine as much as it is meant to provide logical support for large-scale conflict with China from within the region rather than far beyond it.

Despite some analysts cherry-picking episodes of diplomatic posturing by the Trump administration to portray it in “retreat” from Europe or Asia, the very existence of these ongoing programs demonstrates the US’ desire to continue encircling and encroaching upon China both with continuously expanding US military power and through US political interference and regime change targeting China’s allies and partners.

Secretary Hegseth closed his mid-May speech in Singapore by claiming:

The motto of my first platoon, first one I led, was: "Those who long for peace, must prepare for war." And that's exactly what we're doing. We are preparing for war in order to deter war — to achieve peace through strength. And we look out in this room and we look to you — to our allies and to our partners — to join us in this important work.

In reality - the US has been in a continuous state of war throughout the 21st century and continues both waging war and proxy war around the globe today. Secretary Hegseth and the interests he serves are not attempting to “prepare for war in order to deter war,” but rather continuing to wage constant war to deter any sort of equitable peace.

Washington’s sustained campaign of political destabilization, military encroachment, and economic warfare across Asia demonstrates a refusal to accept the reality of a sovereign China and a broader rising Asia which seeks to define its own regional destiny free from Western interference. Washington’s true objective is demonstrably not peace, but the continuation of its historically unwarranted dominance, even at the cost of turning the Asia-Pacific region, or even the rest of the world into spiraling chaos, conflict, and catastrophe.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

New US Administration, New Wonder Weapons for Ukraine

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Sun, 9 Nov 2025 03:01:00 -0800

August 30, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The US has announced plans to ship 3,350 air-launched Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) missiles to Ukraine in yet another escalation amid a war the current Trump administration vowed during the 2024 US presidential campaign to end in “24 hours.”

As another example of US foreign policy continuity of agenda, the ERAM program began under the previous Biden administration and has simply been continued without interruption under current US President Donald Trump.

The ERAM (not to be confused with the anti-air RIM-174 Standard Extended Range Active Missile also referred to as ERAM or SM-6) is essentially a turbine engine-powered glide bomb. A likely candidate for the arms program is the Boeing PJDAM which literally stands for “powered joint direct attack munition.” The ERAM is similar to glide bombs the US has already shipped to Ukraine in large quantities but with a longer range expected to reach between 240-450 kilometers according to The War Zone (TWZ).

The powered glide bomb would be used to strike much further behind Russian lines than previous Western weapons have allowed including HIMARS, ATACMS, various air-launched cruise missiles, and the standard glide bombs the ERAM is likely based on, but with limitations.

Hype Versus Reality

Reporting on the ERAM’s delivery to Ukraine has been particularly ambiguous amid flagging fortunes for Ukraine’s US-sponsored (and directed) armed forces on the battlefield and chronic weapons shortages owed to the collective West’s inadequate military industrial base.

Headlines claiming 3,350 missiles are on their way to Ukraine belie the likely details of the arms program with production only having just started and the first 1,000 missiles likely to reach Ukraine over the course of 2 years, and the rest over a period of up to 3 years or longer.

Even if 3,350 missiles were available today to send Ukraine, the fact that these are air-launched missiles means the most significant bottleneck for use on the battlefield will be combat aircraft and pilots available to deliver the weapons on target.

Limitations regarding Ukrainian airpower have prevented other air-launched and air-dropped munitions from reaching their full potential on the battlefield including Storm Shadow and SCALP air-launched cruise missiles (with ranges of up to 250 km) as well as the aforementioned US-made JDAM glide bombs and even French-made AASM Hammer glide bombs which are powered with a solid rocket motor but fall far short of the ERAM’s longer range of 240-450 km at only 70 km.

Ukrainian airpower, beyond issues of quantity, also face significant challenges from active Russian measures to defend against their use including extensive air defense capabilities targeting both Ukrainian warplanes and the munitions they launch, but also constant efforts to target Ukrainian military aviation on the ground where they operate from.

The longer range of the ERAM will afford Ukrainian warplanes greater safety while conducting stand-off attacks in ways US JDAM and French Hammer munitions cannot, but the low quantities of ERAM missiles and aircraft to deliver them means that - at least in the first 2-3 years - only about 1 missile could be launched per day, or more likely, 1 larger-scale coordinated attack carried out once a week, every other week, or even more infrequently.

A larger number of ERAMs would be required per strike to saturate Russian air defenses in the hopes that at least some of the munitions would make it to their targets.

Compared to Russia’s tempo of airstrikes, missile strikes (ballistic and cruise) as well as long-range drone strikes, the inclusion of ERAMs for Ukraine will make no noticeable difference in terms of the balance of military power on and above the battlefield.

A Battle of Attrition Russia is Still Winning

By the end of 2023 alone, Reuters would report Russia had carried out 7,400 missile and 3,700 Geran-2 drone strikes alone. Since then, Russia has drastically increased the production and use of both.

By 2025, Russia would launch a staggering 6,400 missiles and drones into Ukraine in just a single month, ABC News would report.

According to Ukrainian media based on Ukrainian intelligence reports, Russia is producing anywhere from 720-840 Iskander-M ballistic missiles, 120-180 hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, 300-360 Kalibr cruise missiles, 720-840 Kh-101 cruise missiles, 240-360 Iskander-K cruise missiles along with a variety of other cruise and hypersonic missiles annually.

This adds up to between 2,100 to over 2,580 missiles a year, with production numbers continuing to climb. The opening phase of Russia’s Special Military Operation drew from large stockpiles of missiles. Russian missile production is now reaching levels enabling a similar but sustainable scale of missile strikes.

The very nature of the ERAM program represents an admission of and an attempt to overcome the obvious shortcomings of America’s military industrial base and the many doctrines that have up until now shaped it, versus the vast and still growing size of Russian military production.

Implications of ERAM: Facing the Reality of Attrition Warfare

For decades, the United States has pursued the role as sole global superpower following the Cold War. This worldview, laid out explicitly in Pentagon documents reported on by the New York Times as far back as 1992, aimed to perpetuate American primacy through a combination of military might and economic influence. This policy set the stage for decades of US wars of aggression, political interference, and an ever-expanding series of confrontations, focused specifically on a reemerging Russia and a rising China.

This narrative of uncontested American military supremacy was carefully maintained through a series of conflicts with significantly weaker nations. The wars in Iraq and the toppling of the Libyan government were held up as proof that American precision and technology were vastly superior. America’s military industrial base worked along two premises, "quality over quantity," and profit over purpose, based on a belief that expensive, precision-guided munitions could achieve with one round what would otherwise require dozens of less-profitable conventional munitions.

Washington's proxy war with Russia, however, has revealed American weapons, while technologically advanced, are often not produced in sufficient numbers to counter a peer adversary capable of waging a war of attrition. The myth of quality over quantity has unraveled on and over the battlefield in Ukraine.

The staggering volume of Russian firepower ranging from artillery shells to missiles, rockets, drones, and glide bombs, have ground down the US-European trained and armed Ukrainian armed forces over the course of the 3+ year war - a staggering volume of firepower the US and its European client states have so far failed to match both in terms of quantity, but also quality.

Russian precision-guided weapons have turned out to be at least as effective as US weapons, cheaper, and many times more numerous.

This emerging paradigm has resulted for a variety of reasons, chief among them is the very organization of the collective West’s arms industry under a for-profit model versus the network of for-purpose state-owned enterprises that Russia’s arms industry consists of - within a society that likewise prioritizes purpose over profit.

Russia’s arms industry produces munitions of quantities and quality required to meet the objectives of the state whether or not they produce a profit, while the West’s arms industry produces munitions of quantities and quality to maximize profit.

The fundamental for-profit vs. for-purpose mindset extends further beyond just the arms industry alone into areas like education and infrastructure that provide essential inputs for the arms industry.

According to a 2017 Forbes article, Russia (despite having a population half the size of the United States) had a comparable number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduates per year - meaning that Russia had (and still has) a larger number of STEM graduates per capita than the US, despite fluctuating numbers since 2017.

Russia’s close partnership with China and India further enhances its access to industrial inputs produced by even larger pools of highly skilled labor collectively dwarfing those of the West.

The creation of the ERAM program and others like it, seek to shift the established paradigm of “quality over quantity” in terms of military industrial production. While the ERAM represents a more effective approach, the US and its European client states still fall far short in terms of either quantity or quality precisely because the fundamental differences between the collective West’s approach to military industrial production and Russia’s have not been fully addressed.

The ERAM and other programs like it seek to narrow the existing gap between Western and Russian military industrial production (as well as China’s), however, currently, Russia continues to expand its own production as well as invest in contributing factors like education and infrastructure to expand skilled labor and supply chains even further.

The ERAM program, therefore, is one part of a wider attempt to pivot from the myth of absolute Western technological supremacy to the reality of attrition warfare, one that the West's for-profit military-industrial model is fundamentally ill-equipped to win. While Washington’s political machine continues to wage a fierce and highly effective campaign of information warfare and covert interference far beyond the battlefield, its ability to back these efforts with tangible military power is visibly waning.

The ERAM is not a "wonder weapon" that will change the course of the conflict; it is a belated, and likely inadequate, response to a strategic reality that Russia and its allies have already established.

For the emerging multipolar world, the key to navigating this new era is not to simply match or exceed Western military power, but to continue building a more resilient, purpose-driven industrial and societal foundation - one that is as apt at defending against US influence and interference as it is at outproducing it in terms of artillery shells, missiles, and drones.

In America’s pursuit of full-spectrum dominance, only full-spectrum defense will prevail.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

Trump-Europe-Ukraine Meeting: Selling Division of Labor and Strategic Sequencing

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Sun, 9 Nov 2025 02:59:00 -0800

August 20, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Following the recent meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and the following meeting of European leaders, the Ukrainian president and President Trump in Washington, a predictable US policy had begun to take shape.

As stated as early as February of this year by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, speaking to European leaders at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Europe was tasked with taking over Washington’s proxy war with Russia in Ukraine by ramping up NATO spending, arms production, and the transfer of material support to Ukraine, allowing the US to pivot to the Asia-Pacific prioritizing the containment of China there.

Secretary Hegseth was clear that the conflict would be frozen, not ended, and that European and non-European troops (not American troops) would be transferred into Ukraine to ensure a freeze, followed by Europe reorganizing and rebuilding Ukraine’s armed forces.

As Secretary Hegseth explained, “the reality of scarcity” prevents the US from engaging directly and fully in two great-power conflicts with both Russia and China simultaneously, requiring the freezing of one conflict while the US pursues another.

The very fact the US seeks to confront China in the Asia-Pacific in the same manner it has confronted Russia in Ukraine, demonstrates a complete lack of interest in actual peace with either (or any) nation. The US believes that if it can contain China sooner, it can circle back to confront and contain Russia later.

The Marathon Initiative’s 2024 paper, “Strategic Sequencing, Revisited,” by Wess Mitchel, a former Trump administration official, stated explicitly:

The idea of sequencing is simply to concentrate resources against one opponent in order to weaken its disruptive energies before turning to another, either to deter or defeat it.

Mitchel also used the term “division of labor” in regards to US “allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific,” a term Secretary Hegseth would repeat verbatim in Brussels earlier this year, revealing “division of labor” and “strategic sequencing” as tandem policies Washington is pursuing.

First Principles: America’s Pursuit of Primacy

At the end of the Cold War, as the New York Times (NYT) reported in its 1992 article, “U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring no Rivals Develop,” the US sought to create “a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy.”

The same article would note Washington’s rejection of “collective internationalism,” referred to today as “multipolarism.”

Driving US ambitions to contain Russia and China both in the 1990s and today are not legitimate national security concerns, but rather the preservation of US “interests” abroad, within and along the borders of both nations in a manner the US itself would never tolerate another nation doing to it.

US "strategic sequencing" is not confined to just Russia and China either. This, together with various implementations of "division of labor," are designed to exploit and weaken any nation that challenges American primacy.

While the immediate focus is on the Asia-Pacific, nations in the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa are also being strategically targeted. The destabilization of Syria, the persistent pressure on Iran, and ongoing efforts to isolate nations across the rest of the multipolar world who maintain ties with Russia and China (like Thailand and Cambodia in Southeast Asia) are all part of this larger plan.

Washington's goal is to prevent the formation of any cohesive, multipolar alliance that could effectively counter its hegemonic ambitions. By picking off nations one by one or a few at a time, the US hopes to maintain its dominance and prevent a unified front from ever materializing.

As long as primacy remains the unifying principle of US foreign policy, "pursuing peace” is simply a means of buying time to rectify setbacks in one region while doubling down in another.

Ukraine is America’s War, And America’s Alone

Regarding the war in Ukraine itself, despite recent comments by the Trump administration describing it as “Biden’s war,” or claiming “President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately,” the war is in fact a product of US foreign policy spanning multiple presidential administrations, including President Trump’s first term in office.

The US currently commands Ukraine’s armed forces, as revealed in a NYT article published earlier this year. Since 2014, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has assumed control of and directs Ukraine’s intelligence services, the NYT also reported.

Thus, the conflict in Ukraine can only be ended when the US decides to do so or is forced to do so by Russia.

Understanding these basic first principles of US foreign policy regarding the conflict in Ukraine is essential in successfully navigating the propaganda the US and its client states are using to perform an attempted “division of labor” and “strategic sequencing.”

Continuity of Agenda Under Trump

Since coming to office, the Trump administration itself has continued every conflict and confrontation inherited from the previous Biden administration in pursuit of global primacy including the US proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, a confrontation with Iran escalated to outright war this past June, and the continued expansion of America’s military footprint in the Asia-Pacific region along China’s periphery and even within its borders on the island province of Taiwan.

America’s policy regarding Russia specifically is described in detail in the 2019 RAND Corporation paper titled, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground.”

The paper lists economic measures including “hinder petroleum exports,” “reduce natural gas exports and hinder pipeline expansions,” and “impose sanctions,” - measures that had been pursued by the US at the time the paper was published and ever since including under the first Trump administration, the subsequent Biden administration and now during President Trump’s second term in office.

Geopolitical measures listed by the RAND paper included, “provide lethal aid to Ukraine,” which began under the first Trump administration, “increase support to the Syrian rebels,” which manifested itself late last year in the successful US overthrow of the Syrian government, “promote regime change in Belarus,” which Russia has so far successfully neutralized, and “exploit tensions in the South Caucasus,” which is unfolding currently under the Trump administration in the form of a 99 year lease on territory potentially placing US troops along both Russia’s and Iran’s borders.

Together, these policies represent a continued attempt by the US to encircle, contain, undermine, and over-extend the Russian Federation, ultimately seeking to precipitate a Soviet Union-style collapse even as the US feigns interest in “peace” with Russia in Ukraine.

As in the Past, So in the Future

Regardless of setbacks and limitations, as long as the US continues pursuing primacy over the nations of the globe rather than constructive cooperation with them, any US overture of “peace” with nations it has labeled “adversaries” and “threats” represents an established pattern of pausing, reorganizing, rearming, and reinitiating hostilities - not any genuine shift in policy.

The most recent example of this was the US regime-change war waged on Syria. Following Russia’s intervention in 2015, the war was brought to a pause. The US used this pause to rearm and reorganize its proxies in and around Syria while Syria’s allies, Russia and Iran, were drawn into a series of costly conflicts elsewhere. Once Russia and Iran were sufficiently overextended, the US reinitiated fighting in late 2024, quickly and successfully overthrowing the Syrian government.

The collapse of Syria was followed by US-Israeli military operations carried out against Iran itself combined with a still-ongoing push to eliminate what is left of Iran’s allies in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen.

A pause in Washington’s proxy war on Russia in Ukraine will simply see US efforts shift elsewhere.

As Secretary Hegseth laid out in February, any pause would be accompanied by European troops occupying Ukraine just as the US and Turkey occupied Syria. It would also include the rearming and reorganizing of Ukraine’s military - as was mentioned specifically during the recent US-European-Ukrainian meeting in Washington - and the reinitiation of hostilities at a later time when factors lean back in Washington’s favor.

Not only is this what Secretary Hegseth’s statements regarding a “division of labor” and “strategic sequencing” imply, it is what the US has done all throughout the Cold War and ever since.

During the Bush Jr. administration, it is admitted that the US pursued regime change in several Eastern European nations as well as Georgia in the Caucasus region. In 2003, the US successfully overthrew the Georgian government just as it did the Ukrainian government in 2014. Just as it did in Ukraine, the US began reorganizing and building up Georgia’s military and in 2008, as an EU investigation concluded, Georgia initiated a short, failed war against Russian forces.

The next year, under the Obama administration, the US sought a “reset” in US-Russian relations with then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clintion literally presenting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov a physical “reset” button as a symbol of the new relationship.

In reality - the US simply sought time and space to prepare the next series of provocations - which it did - from 2011 onward dividing and destroying much of the Arab World including targeting Russian allies Libya and Syria, and the aforementioned successful toppling of the Ukrainian government in 2014, along with the US “pivot to Asia” which began under the Obama administration and continues to this day.

Not only do recent US policies appear to represent just the latest in this cycle of posing as seeking peace while preparing for the next series of confrontations, the US has all but said freezing the conflict in Ukraine is meant to give the US time and space to prioritize containing China first with the implication being the US will return to antagonize Russia in Ukraine afterwards.

Only time will tell to what degree Russia accommodates or disrupts attempts by the US to implement a "division of labor” regarding Ukraine to perform a process of “strategic sequencing” to defeat Russia, China and their allies in detail, and whether or not the rest of the multipolar world will unite sufficiently to aid Russia or allow themselves to be divided and distracted by similar US efforts to disrupt and destabilize their respective nations.

Russia’s calculus will be based on either its confidence in continuing the Special Military Operation (SMO) to its full conclusion, collapsing Ukraine’s military and removing the US-installed client regime placed in Kiev from 2014 onward, or the necessity to agree to a pause Moscow feels it can make better use of than the collective West and face off against the US and its proxies in the future from an even stronger position.

It may be that Russia seeks to free up resources for its own “pivot” to aid allies like Iran and China as the US itself turns its attention further east. Unlike the US, however, Russia lacks the long list of client states it can enlist to mind one conflict while pivoting to the other as Washington can and is doing.

The future of the multipolar world may depend as much on aiding nations in preventing their political capture and exploitation by the US as it does on multipolar nations cooperating with one another as they defend themselves against US encroachment, coercion, and capture.

The ultimate test for Russia and the emerging multipolar world lies not just in their ability to endure US designs aimed at each of them individually, but in their capacity to turn this strategy against Washington. If Russia can conclude its SMO in Ukraine decisively while simultaneously strengthening its alliances with nations like China and Iran, it can render the "division of labor" useless.

Similarly, if China can use this period to solidify its regional influence and deepen its ties with nations outside the collective West, the US will find its pivot to the Asia-Pacific far less effective.

The current geopolitical landscape is a high-stakes game of geopolitical chess, and while the US believes it can corner its rivals one by one, a coordinated checkmate from the multipolar world could end the game for good. Success means a world defined by peace, stability, and prosperity amid a global balance of power. Failure means forfeiting our collective future to a handful of special interests in the US who have already demonstrated for a century the means and desire to destroy it.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

Ukraine Proxy-War: Trump Picks Up Where Biden Left Off

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Sun, 9 Nov 2025 02:56:00 -0800

July 21, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The announcement by US President Donald Trump that his administration would pick up precisely where the previous Biden administration left off, and continue shipping billions of dollars in weapons and ammunition to Ukraine has taken commentators and many across the general public by surprise.

Previous attempts by the Trump administration to coerce Russia into a ceasefire and implement a Syria-style bufferzone in Ukraine were misinterpreted by many as genuine good-faith efforts to end the conflict.

Through careful analysis, however, it was clear before President Trump even took office that no such desire existed in Washington or on Wall Street - including anywhere within the incoming Trump administration - to end the conflict.

Instead, the US seeks merely to freeze the war in Ukraine as part of a wider approach referred to as “strategic sequencing” in which the US pivots the majority of its resources toward dismembering the Iranian nation-state and containing China in the Asia-Pacific region, before ultimately returning to more aggressive and direct conflict with Russia.

These policies have been documented in papers spanning decades, including through a number of think tanks associated specifically with President Trump himself such as the Marathon Initiative (co-founded by Elbridge Colby, current US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy under President Trump), the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and the America First Policy Institute - all of which identify Russia along with Iran, China, and North Korea, and “threats” the US must confront.

These think-tanks serve as interfaces between the Trump administration and well-established institutions funded by the largest most influential interests in the collective West, where mainstream US foreign policy pursuing American primacy worldwide is merely copy and pasted over to these think-thanks before being re-branded and sold to the public under the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) or “America First” slogans.

Global Primacy at Any Cost: Washington’s Only Objective Past, Present, & Future

The pursuit of US primacy worldwide has been the overarching geopolitical objective of the United States spanning the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, with the most current iteration of this policy rooted in the end of the Cold War and the establishment of strategies meant to prevent the emergence of any peer or near-peer competitor around the globe.

The New York Times in its 1992 article, “U.S. Strategy Plan Call for Insuring no Rivals Develop” would explain:

…the American mission will be "convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests." The classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy.

Under a section of the article titled, “Rejecting Collective Approach,” the NYT would state:

With its focus on this concept of benevolent domination by one power, the Pentagon document articulates the clearest rejection to date of collective internationalism, the strategy that emerged from World War II when the five victorious powers sought to form a United Nations that could mediate disputes and police outbreaks of violence.

Today, “collective internationalism” is referred to as “multipolarism,” the containment and reversal of which remains US foreign policy’s highest priority.

President Trump’s threats upon coming into office in 2025 to dismantle the BRICS intergovernmental organization through a combination of tariffs and the continuation of wars and proxy wars targeting its members and allies, represents the latest manifestation of this policy introduced to the public by the NYT in 1992.

Through a variety of means, from the establishment of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) used to undermine and politically capture the governments of targeted nations, to decades-spanning wars and proxy wars from Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, to Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific aimed at destabilizing and/or toppling allies and potential allies along the peripheries of Russia, Iran, and China, the US has established an arc of control spanning across the entirety of Eurasia and beyond.

The targeting, encirclement, containment, and even toppling of the pillars of modern multipolarism - including a reemerging Russian Federation, a rapidly rising China, and a resilient Iran - have defined decades of US foreign policy, transcending all presidential administrations including those of the 21st century, from Bush Jr. and Obama, to Trump, Biden, and once again during the Trump administration’s second term in office currently.

The Trump Administration’s Real Intentions Were Public for all to See

While many who supported Donald Trump’s bid for office in 2024 believed he would end the “forever wars” inherited by the previous Biden administration, even campaign rhetoric itself betrayed this notion.

Then vice president nominee JD Vance in October of 2024 said that any shift away from the conflict in Ukraine would only be to double down on escalation with China in the Asia-Pacific region. The month prior, JD Vance’s proposed “settlement” in Ukraine was simply a Syria-style freeze rather than any actual resolution of the root cause of the conflict.

Long before elections, the Trump campaign had repeatedly stated Trump administration policy toward NATO would demand vastly greater spending from its member states - the organization itself existing solely as a means of pursuing US primacy worldwide, and more specifically vis-a-vis Russia.

In essence, even before stepping foot into office, the Trump administration was laying out the “division of labor” and “strategic sequencing” policies defined by unelected corporate-financier-funded think tanks years before the 2024 elections even took place, policies that the Biden administration itself had helped set the stage for throughout its 4 years in office.

The above-mentioned Marathon Initiative in an October 2024 paper titled, “Strategic Sequencing, Revisited” would explicitly lay this out:

The United States faces a growing risk of multi-front war against Russia, China and Iran. The optimal response to this danger would be a sequential strategy aimed at inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia in Ukraine on a faster timeline than China is prepared to move against Taiwan. But for that strategy to work, the United States must use the current window wisely to shore up the situation in Eastern Europe, broker a more effective division-of-labor with allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and reform the U.S. defense industrial base.

Having won the elections in November 2024 and as early as February 2025, Trump administration Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth would repeat the phrase, “division of labor,” verbatim in this regard, during a directive he delivered to Washington’s European client states in Brussels.

Secretary Hegseth would say:

We also face a peer competitor in the Communist Chinese with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing tradeoffs to ensure deterrence does not fail.

As the United States prioritizes its attention to these threats, European allies must lead from the front.

Together, we can establish a division of labor that maximizes our comparative advantages in Europe and Pacific respectively.

Secretary Hegseth would also demand NATO member states increase military spending from 2% to 5% of their respective GDPs - a demand NATO member states have since committed to.

Regarding the continuation of arms shipments to Ukraine (simply laundered through NATO), Secretary Hegseth demanded Europe, “double down and re-commit yourselves not only to Ukraine's immediate security needs, but to Europe's long-term defense and deterrence goals,” through Europe providing the “overwhelming share of future lethal and nonlethal aid to Ukraine.”

Worse still, Secretary Hegseth demanded America’s European and non-European client states prepare their own troops to deploy into Ukrainian territory as part of “security guarantees” to freeze, not actually end the conflict.

Even this early into the Trump administration, the intention was clearly not to “end” the war in Ukraine, but simply freeze it while pivoting toward wider confrontations with both Iran and China - both of which have since escalated, including through open war of aggression by the US against Iran.

The ending of US arms shipments would be the most basic prerequisite toward ending the Ukraine war, especially considering the Trump administration’s own admission that the conflict is indeed a US proxy war fought against Russia. It was during an interview in March 2025, when US Secretary of State Marco Rubio would admit, “frankly, it’s a proxy war between nuclear powers, the United States helping Ukraine, and Russia.”

The New York Times has revealed over the last 3 years of the conflict that the US had captured in 2014 and now directs the entirety of Ukraine’s intelligence agencies while US commanding officers operate at the top of the Ukrainian armed forces' chain of command from a military base in Germany.

Thus, ending the war depends entirely on the party which deliberately provoked it and continues to sustain it to dismantle the means by which it has done so, while addressing the geopolitical objectives that drove this proxy war to begin with - Washington’s desire to eliminate “rivals” and any manifestation of “collective internationalism,” or “multipolarism.”

The Trump administration is doing none of these things and is instead escalating the proxy war further, based on policy papers pre-dating the 2024 elections the current Trump administration has obediently implemented since. This has resulted in Russia’s own steadfast policy of refusing ceasefires designed to freeze and ultimately prolong - not end the conflict.

US Ukraine Proxy War Meant to Tie Down/Overextend, Not “Defeat” Russia

Analysts, commentators, and many across the general public have made the mistake of believing the US proxy war against Russia, fought through Ukraine, has “failed” because of the deterioration of Ukrainian forces and the depletion of US and European weapons stockpiles.

However, another policy paper published by the RAND Corporation in 2019 titled, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground,” stated explicitly that the goal wasn’t to “defeat” Russia in Ukraine, but rather, “increase the cost to Russia” of already ongoing military, economic, and political concern regarding the US overthrow of the Ukrainian government beginning in 2014.

The paper explained:

The paper made no elusion regarding the ultimate fate of Ukraine, warning US attempts to lure Russia deeper into conflict with Ukraine could:

…produce disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows. It might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace.

These are all demonstrable consequences of the conflict as of 2025 with the trajectory of the conflict pointing toward even greater costs for Ukraine the longer it continues.

The purpose of miring Russia in a conflict in Ukraine is to prevent it from spending resources checking US aggression, encroachment, and even outright regime change elsewhere. Another option described by the 2019 RAND paper was, “increase support to the Syrian rebels,” in reference to previously US-listed terrorist organization Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Al Qaeda subsidiary.

Because Russia prioritized the conflict in Ukraine, its ongoing military operations in Syria could not be expanded to meet continued US support toward regime change there, culminating in the collapse of the Syrian government in late 2024 under the Biden administration.

As with Russia, So with the Rest of the Multipolar World…

This process of creating strategic dilemmas along Russia’s peripheries to both overextend it, and prevent it from countering US geopolitical objectives elsewhere is also being employed against Iran and China, all as part of a "division of labor” and “strategic sequencing” approach toward maintaining global domination as described by the NYT in 1992 and pursued by Washington ever since.

Considering the Trump administration itself is openly committed to this overarching geopolitical objective and has demonstrated its commitment to the policies required to achieve it, the continuation of the wars and proxy wars facilitated by these policies should come as no surprise.

While some commentators claim President Trump has been since coerced into or convinced to adopt the continuation of the Ukraine war, both think tanks connected to his administration long before even the 2024 elections were held and the administration itself since, have merely picked up right where the previous Biden administration left off.

Trump administration talk of ending the conflict was a means to both pander to segments of the American voting public as well as lure Russia into a ceasefire that would allow the US to freeze (not end) the conflict and pivot with many more resources to pursue war and proxy war against both Iran and China.

Russia’s refusal to capitulate to US demands has forced the US to continue committing weapons, ammunition, and other resources to the conflict in Ukraine, reducing the amount of resources the US can pursue global war with elsewhere.

Despite the many weaknesses of the US exposed by its proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, its ability to nonetheless continue the conflict, overthrow the Syrian government last year, ignite direct war with Iran in the Middle East, and continue building up military forces in the Asia-Pacific against China demonstrate it still possesses global-spanning power and thus poses a serious global-spanning danger.

The continuity of agenda demonstrated by the Trump administration despite diametrically opposite rhetoric during the 2024 campaign is a reminder that change within the United States will not come through elections

The US will continue to pose a global-spanning threat until there exists interests in the US that can displace those currently directing its foreign policy, who choose to cooperate with the rest of the world rather than maintain dominion over it. Until then, it is incumbent upon the multipolar world to create the conditions worldwide within which the US is simply unable to pursue interference, coercion, and aggression any further.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

US Still Dangerous Despite Limits of Military Production

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Sat, 12 Jul 2025 22:41:00 -0700

July 9, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - The US has recently paused the shipment of some weapons and munitions to Ukraine “due to worries that U.S. weapons stockpiles have fallen too low,” Politico reported.

This is only the most recent development amid a growing military industrial crisis unfolding across the collective West as Washington and its network of client states wage increasingly intense and protracted wars and proxy wars including in Ukraine against Russia, across the Middle East against Iran and its allies, and as the US prepares for similar conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region against China.

Politico would note air defense systems, other precision guided weapons, and even artillery shells were among the shipments being paused due to concerns regarding depleted US stockpiles.

Since the beginning of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022, initial surges of US-European weapons and munitions have steadily decreased despite promises to expand military industrial production across the collective West. In some cases, US weapons already faced critical shortages even before the conflict in Ukraine expanded in 2022.

In January of 2022, Saudi Arabia announced critical shortages of Patriot air defense interceptors, exhausting them amid its US-backed war with neighboring Yemen. The US, even at that point, was unable to replace Saudi Arabia’s depleted stockpiles forcing Riyadh to borrow missiles from other Persian Gulf states operating the systems.

Lockheed Martin, which produces Patriot missiles, does so at a rate of about 500-600 interceptors a year, with plans to expand production to only 650 by the year 2027. Ukraine’s requirements alone far exceed this quantity with Russia producing between 720-840 Iskander ballistic missiles, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, that only the Patriot missile system is capable of intercepting.

Each incoming ballistic missile requires at a minimum 2 Patriot missiles to increase the probability of a successful intercept. This means that even by 2027 Lockheed will only be producing about half the missiles Ukraine would require just to intercept Russian Iskander missiles each year, and that’s if every single missile Lockheed made was sent to Ukraine - which they won’t be.

Similar shortages and failures to sufficiently expand production are faced by US Stinger man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), Javelin anti-tank missiles, counter-battery radar systems, and even 155mm artillery shells.

Regarding artillery shells, despite benefiting from a rare exception where US government-owned facilities were used to expand shell production regardless of insufficient “demand signals” and poor “business cases,” and a head start of several years before the 2022 SMO began, production has only been expanded to about 75,000 shells a month with the target of 100,000 shells expected to be reached by the end of 2025. Together with European shell production, Western media still reports Russia enjoys a 3:1 advantage in artillery shell production.

The production of other, more sophisticated military systems is lagging even further behind Russian military industrial output. And as is the case with Patriot missiles, even if the US and Europe could produce comparable quantities of these weapons and munitions, it is impractical to send all of it to Ukraine.

Finite Arms for Infinite Wars

As per stated US foreign policy objectives, the US requires large amounts of military equipment including Patriot missiles for its continued wars and proxy wars far beyond just Ukraine, including in the Middle East against Iran (where huge quantities of air defense missiles were likewise exhausted in just 12 days of recent fighting) and amid its military build-up across the Asia-Pacific region vis-a-vis China.

The US is relying on several strategies to match the reality of limited means of military industrial production with Washington’s desire for unlimited war worldwide including what US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has referred to as a “division of labor,” through which the US is forcing its client states to divert public money from actual public interests toward weapons procurements and production in service of Washington’s wars and proxy wars worldwide.

NATO’s recent announcement of bloc-wide spending increases of up to 5% of each member state’s GDP was in direct response to Secretary Hegseth’s directive delivered in February of this year.

Another strategy is often referred to as “strategic sequencing” in which the US concentrates available resources on one designated adversary at a time rather than attempting to fight multiple nations at once.

A 2024 Marathon Initiative paper titled, “Strategic Sequencing, Revisited,” by Wess Mitchell would note:

The idea of sequencing is simply to concentrate resources against one opponent in order to weaken its disruptive energies before turning to another, either to deter or defeat it. Sequencing is necessary because power is not infinite. For even the strongest of states, it is bounded by all kinds of things: distance, money, attention span. By dealing decisively with one opponent before other threats have fully manifested, a great power seeks to avoid a situation where either its military resources are stretched too thin and it suffers catastrophic defeat, or it has to shoulder the financial burdens of ramping up for a sustained war against all enemies in all directions concurrently, with concomitant strains on its economic base and society. The goal is to gain an advantage in competition by manipulating the factor of time.

Thus, victory in Ukraine by defeating Russian forces is not necessarily Washington’s objective, but rather overextending Russia militarily, economically, and politically by entangling it in a costly and protracted conflict increasingly fueled by European military support, freeing up US resources to be concentrated on Iran and ultimately China.

Because Russia is committed to its military operations in Ukraine, it is unable to commit significant resources to counter US wars and proxy wars elsewhere, including in Syria where the US was able to successfully overthrow the government late last year, or Iran which the US and its Middle East proxies - particularly Israel - seek to “weaken its disruptive energies before turning to another” – “another” being China in the Asia-Pacific region.

The US is using a “division of labor” both in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region as well, forcing proxies including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Japan, South Korea, the island province of Taiwan, and the Philippines to divert large amounts of public resources to likewise procure and produce weapons to augment US military power and industrial production.

This system of client states together with America’s global-spanning military infrastructure, global-spanning navy, and its extensive network of political interference both enhancing existing client states and creating new ones, allows the US to geopolitically outmaneuver the emerging multipolar world order despite the advantages nations like Russia and China possess in terms of economic strength and military industrial production.

An Unsustainable But Still Dangerous Balancing Act

The strategies of "division of labor" and "strategic sequencing" employed by the US, while seemingly pragmatic, are ultimately attempts to manage an unsustainable equation.

By outsourcing military burdens to client states and prioritizing adversaries one-by-one, Washington seeks to extend its reach without overextending its immediate resources.

However, these tactics come at a significant cost, compelling US client states to divert critical public funds towards military expenditures, often at the expense of domestic needs and social welfare. This coercive and ultimately unsustainable approach, exemplified by NATO's increased spending directives drains the collective wealth of nations - a process already undermining social cohesion and economic stability across the collective West.

Moreover, the inherent unpredictability of international relations means that a carefully planned "sequence" can be easily disrupted by unforeseen events, potentially leaving the US and its client states vulnerable on multiple fronts. The margins of error continue to narrow leaving less and less room for contingencies created both by chance and by counter-strategies employed by nations like Russia, China, and Iran individually or working in cooperation.

While nations leading the creation of a multipolar world cannot and should not create an equal but opposing network of client states to disrupt Washington’s “division of labor” and “strategic sequencing,” they could encourage better cooperation across the multipolar world to defend against US political interference, economic coercion, and military aggression.

Not only could greater cooperation negate the advantages the US uses to offset the limits of its own military industrial production, it could also disrupt the careful balancing act the US is performing to cling to its unipolar world order.

While multipolarism to many seems inevitable, it would be reckless to indulge in complacency.

The collapse of Syria in late 2024, the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran in June 2025, and the obedience US client states across Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific still demonstrate in pursuit of US geopolitical objectives is a sobering reminder that despite what appears to be its irreversible decline, the US remains a significant threat to global peace, stability, and prosperity. It is a threat that will remain until the nations of the world create the conditions within which the US is left no choice but to cooperate with all other nations rather than continue to impose itself upon them.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

US President Trump Streamlined the National Endowment for Democracy, not Dismantle it

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Sat, 12 Jul 2025 22:36:00 -0700

June 11, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - While many believe that under the Trump administration the controversial National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was defunded, dismantled, or otherwise dissolved, the reality is far less dramatic and far more dangerous.

Despite President Donald Trump’s outspoken criticism of global entanglements and calls of "ending the era of endless wars," stretching back all the way to his first term in office, the NED not only continues to receive taxpayer funding under his administration to facilitate instability and conflict worldwide, it has quietly expanded its reach behind a newly adopted policy that makes its activities less transparent than ever.

On its official website, the NED recently revealed what it calls a “duty to care” policy - an internal shift that effectively ends the organization’s long-standing practice of openly listing most of the foreign organizations and movements it finances. This change, framed as a protective measure for recipients in “high-risk environments,” marks a complete reversal of one of the few things that previously distinguished NED operations from covert CIA influence campaigns - the veneer of transparency.

A "Pro-Democracy" Front With Covert DNA

Founded in 1983, the NED was created to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly, according to former NED co-founder Allen Weinstein. For decades, it served as the US arm of so-called “soft power,” funneling money to foreign political groups, media outlets, labor unions, and activist organizations deemed favorable to US interests - usually under the banner of “promoting democracy.”

But “democracy” in this context is indistinguishable from regime change. From Venezuela to Belarus, from Hong Kong to Myanmar, NED-funded groups have played central roles in political destabilization and even precipitating war, many of them advocating positions explicitly aligned with US foreign policy and done entirely at the cost of their own nation’s stability and best interests.

The obvious purpose of creating the NED wasn’t to end covert interference around the globe, but rather to continue the CIA’s work Americans and people worldwide were increasingly aware of and opposed to, by whitewashing it and repackaging it as transparently “promoting democracy.”

Since the NED’s founding, the Western media has intermittently admitted the NED has been involved in global-spanning regime change. In 2004, the London Guardian admitted the US government through the NED overthrew governments in Serbia in 2000 and Georgia in 2003, while unsuccessfully attempting to do so in Belarus and Ukraine.

The article described unrest taking place in Ukraine at the time as:

…an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.

Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.

Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze.

Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko.

The article names the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), and Freedom House by name, all three of which are subsidiaries of the NED.

In 2011, the NYT would admit the US government through the NED was behind the regional destabilization and regime change in 2011 referred to as the “Arab Spring.”

The article explained:

A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington, according to interviews in recent weeks and American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.

And that:

The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department.

The US-engineered “Arab Spring” would precipitate multiple US-led wars across the region ravaging Libya, Yemen, Syria, and affecting every nation in between.

US political interference continues up to and including today under the current Trump administration with attempts to once again destabilize the nation of Georgia along Russia’s borders, continued US-sponsored violence in Myanmar along China’s borders, attacks by US-backed militant groups in southwest Pakistan targeting China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and the continued operation of virtually every NED-funded organization operating elsewhere along China’s periphery including in Thailand and the Philippines.

Democracy as a Cover for Political Interference

Democracy, by definition, is a form of self-determination. If a political movement relies on, or is shaped by the funding and direction of a foreign government - especially one with a track record of overt military invasion, occupation, and conquest like the United States - it is not “promoting democracy,” but rather political interference.

Any nation whose internal political affairs are subject to the influence of the US government through the NED, its subsidiaries or adjacent organizations is not exercising democratic self-rule, but living under a subtler form of political occupation - one where ballots replace bullets, but the end result is the same - the replacement of sovereign leadership with a US-installed client regime.

In many cases, US NED-funded and directed instability takes the form of armed-violence amid which “activists” rather than invading US troops seize critical government buildings, attack critical infrastructure, and carry out other objectives an invading US military force would seek to achieve including the destruction of specific infrastructure and the ousting of ruling governments.

The End of “Transparency”

The NED’s decision to stop publishing the identities of the groups it funds represents more than just an administrative shift. It is a turning point, following years of growing public awareness both in the US and worldwide of what the NED is really doing and why.

In the past, critics were at least able to track and expose how NED money was flowing into particular movements - from opposition parties in Nicaragua to protest organizers in Hong Kong. That visibility, however minimal, imposed some form of political pressure and constraint on the US.

With the “duty to care” policy, even that has now been eliminated.

Today, the NED operates with the same impunity as any covert intelligence operation - only without the oversight, legal restrictions, or classification protocols typically associated with CIA activity.

In practice, this allows the US to wage political war under the pretense of “promoting democracy,” while overall leaving fewer fingerprints behind.

And while the shift within the NED and across US foreign policy as a whole should prompt nations to respond with stricter scrutiny and regulation of the organizations still likely receiving US support, even when US interference was more transparent, many nations failed categorically to protect national security from it. Now that US interference is being done more covertly, it will be even more difficult for advocates of greater national security regarding foreign-funded NGOs to spur governments around the world into action.

Under Trump, Business as Usual

Despite the perception among some the Trump administration intended to dismantle or defund the NED, no such action occurred. In fact, NED funding is continuing after only a brief pause, with the majority of NED operations continuing uninterrupted.

Much like the US military-industrial complex which continues expanding despite President Trump's rhetorical opposition to “forever wars” - the regime change-industrial-complex led by the NED, its affiliates, and subsidiaries, have likewise not only continued, but are enhancing their menace to peace and stability worldwide.

Some may argue that recent attention placed on the NED and adjacent organizations like USAID is positive progress in the right direction. In reality, this recent attention has more in common with what is known as a “limited hangout,” a method of perception management used when state secrecy has been compromised, and “limited” information is either admitted to or even volunteered, while central information is still withheld from the public. The public is often distracted by or satisfied with this limited admission and fails to pursue the issue further.

In the case of NED and USAID funding, after many years of growing awareness of and opposition to both, many Americans believe both organizations have now been dismantled, oblivious both are still operational and the global network of political subversion they facilitate continues operating uninterrupted.

A Hidden Hand With Open Consequences

The NED’s new era of covert funding and hidden recipients marks a dangerous evolution in US foreign policy. Under the guise of care and caution, the organization has closed the one window that allowed even limited public scrutiny of its global interference.

Regardless of whether the CIA or NED fund and direct foreign interference worldwide and regardless of the degree of transparency involved, the outcome remains the same - a world where real decisions are not made by people on the ground in any one of the many nations targeted by US interference, but by politicians in Washington and policymakers at corporate-funded think tanks.

While American voters and many around the globe held hope that the incoming Trump administration would make good on its promises to roll back US interference abroad and focus instead on the best interests of Americans in America, the administration has instead continued US wars and proxy wars in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia together with sharpening and streamlining the military and non-military means with which to expand them even further.

Despite the illusions of reform or even “revolution” under the Trump administration, the truth is the NED (and USAID) remains as active as ever, more unaccountable than ever, and continue to serve as a sophisticated instrument of political manipulation for the very special interests of the “deep state” many Americans voted President Trump into office to oppose.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

Continuity of Agenda: Trump Administration White-Washes Bush-Obama-Biden-backed Al-Qaeda in Syria

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Sun, 8 Jun 2025 03:34:00 -0700

May 29, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - US President Donald Trump announced during his May 2025 trip to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia that the US would be lifting long-standing sanctions on Syria, Reuters reported.

Reuters would also claim:

The end of sanctions on Syria would be a huge boost for a country that has been shattered by more than a decade of civil war. Rebels led by current President Ahmed al-Sharaa toppled President Bashar al-Assad last December.

During this same trip, President Trump would also meet and shake hands with the current Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani who - before taking power - headed the still US State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization al-Nusrah Front, (now referred to as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham or HTS).

In reality, the conflict in Syria was not a civil war, but rather a proxy-war waged by the US alongside its Persian Gulf allies, Turkey, and Israel against the Syrian Arab Republic.

The US sanctions President Trump is now lifting were designed to cripple the Syrian government, economy, and military, prevent reconstruction and economic recovery, and devastate the civilian population, all to hollow out the Syrian state to precipitate its eventual collapse as former US Department of Defense official Dana Stroul stated publicly in 2019.

The proxy-war included a US-led campaign training, funding, equipping, and arming a network of extremists including al-Sharaa/al-Jolani’s terrorist al-Nusrah/HTS.

Throughout the conflict in Syria, even US-based publications like the New York Times admitted as early as 2012 the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was facilitating the flow of billions of dollars in weapons, ammunition, and equipment from Turkey into Syria.

While the official narrative was the US had been arming “moderate rebels,” no explanation was given as to how or why terrorist organizations like al-Nusrah/HTS quickly ended up dominating the Western-backed militancy. If the US and its allies were providing billions in aid to “moderate rebels,” who was providing even greater amounts of aid to extremist organizations allowing them to dominate the US-backed proxy-war in Syria?

Trump Plays Role in Decades-Spanning Proxy-War Waged by the “Deep State”

The answer is simple - there were never any “moderate rebels.” The US planned years before the conflict even began to use extremists as proxies to overthrow governments across the region, including Syria’s.

Seymour Hersh as early as 2007 in his New Yorker article, “The Redirection,” warned:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Preparations to build up militant groups as well as their political wings - especially the Muslim Brotherhood - were already ongoing when Hersh wrote his 2007 article and continued until the US-engineered “Arab Spring” unfolded in 2011 under the Obama administration.

The New York Times would admit in an April 2011 article that:

A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington, according to interviews in recent weeks and American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.

The same article also admitted:

The chaos the US-engineered “Arab Spring” created was used as an opportunity to launch multi-wars and proxy-wars across the region including a NATO-led regime change operation against Libya in North Africa, a US-backed Saudi-led coalition targeting Ansar Allah in Yemen, and the US proxy-war in Syria which eventually involved the US invasion and occupation of eastern Syria while NATO-member Turkey invaded and occupied its northern regions.

Throughout the first Trump administration (2017-2021) brutal US sanctions and the illegal occupation of Syrian territory which began under the Obama administration were continued or even expanded. While many supporters of President Trump have attempted to claim his administration wanted to withdraw US forces from Syria, the Trump administration repeatedly and eagerly launched military strikes across Syria and carried out attacks on Syria’s ally Iran including the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani who at the time was in fact waging a regional war against US-backed terrorist organizations including/especially al-Nusra/HTS and the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS) as even US government-funded media PBS admitted at the time.

Thus, President Trump lifting US sanctions on Syria now that US-backed terrorists have succeeded in Washington’s goal of overthrowing the Syrian government, is simply the next step in what is clearly continuity of agenda, allowing US-backed proxies to consolidate control over Syria and prepare it as a springboard for wider regional violence aimed at Iran and what remains of its network of allies and partners.

President Trump’s Role in Continuing the “Deep State” Agenda

While al Nusra/HTS remains a US State Department designated foreign terrorist organization at the time of this writing, if recent history can serve as a guide, attempts will be made to delist it - allowing the US to more overtly aid it as Washington’s confrontation with Iran continues.

A similar process took place during the US-led NATO war in Libya. The US had likewise armed and backed the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) - Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Libya - even as a US State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization.

LIFG remained on the US State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations until long after the successful overthrow of the Libyan government. Despite providing weapons, training, equipment, and even air cover for LIFG, the US sought to maintain plausible deniability as the terrorist organization committed ethnic and religious-driven atrocities all throughout and immediately after the conflict.

In late 2015, LIFG was officially delisted by the US State Department even as the organization and its members continued carrying out terrorism - not only across the Arab World - but within the borders of its Western sponsors, including the 2017 Manchester attack in the United Kingdom, the BBC reported.

US President Donald Trump ran for office both in 2017 and 2024 on the premise of “draining the swamp” and fighting against the “deep state.” During his first administration and now continuing throughout his second administration, he has instead demonstrably played his role in continuing all of the policies of the “deep state.”

Just as has been the case throughout the Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations, President Trump will continue overseeing the use of extremist groups to advance US foreign policy objectives around the globe, including in the Middle East and specifically against the nation of Iran. President Trump’s lifting of sanctions on Syria and his normalization of the leader of a still US-listed terrorist organization demonstrates the vast disparity between President Trump’s rhetoric and the reality of what his administration is actually presiding over.

The world should have learned by now that holding its breath and waiting for the United States to end continuity of agenda on its own is a dangerous, irresponsible fantasy and only through cooperation and concerted effort can the global system the US draws its power from be displaced/replaced and the rise of multipolarism used to secure nations and regions around the world from the decades-spanning interference and aggression of the United States government and the corporate-financier interests determining its policies - no matter who sits in the White House.

Those seeking comfort in the delusion that President Trump represents “change” are betrayed by President Trump’s own words, actions, and policies as his administration clearly is picking up right where the Biden administration and others left off.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

Washington’s “Golden Dome” - Multi-Trillion Tax Dollar Heist at Best, Dangerous Provocation at Worst

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Sun, 8 Jun 2025 03:32:00 -0700

May 25, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - US President Donald Trump has announced his administration has chosen the architecture for the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system, claiming it will cost $175 billion and be operational in “less than three years” with a “success rate close to 100%.”

During President Trump’s announcement on May 21, 2025, it was claimed the Golden Dome will consist of technology deployed across land, sea, and space capable of intercepting hypersonic, ballistic, and advanced cruise missiles, “even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space.”

Former-US President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program (also known as the Strategic Defense Initiative) was repeatedly cited during the announcement. That program sought to use space-based weapons to void the doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” allowing the US to conduct a nuclear or non-nuclear first strike on another nation and avoid what had otherwise been an inevitable nuclear retaliation that would destroy both nations in the process.

Specifically because mutually assured destruction was seen as a better deterrence against a first strike by one nuclear-armed nation against another, along with concerns over costs, technological limitations, and then-existing arms control treaties like the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), the initiative was never fully realized.

Granting the US Impunity to Attack, Not “Defend” Itself

US Space Force General Michael Guetlein, picked to lead the Golden Dome project and present during its announcement, would claim:

As you're aware our adversaries have become very capable and very intent on holding the homeland at risk. While we have been focused on keeping the peace overseas, our adversaries have been quickly modernizing their nuclear forces, building out ballistic missiles capable of hosting multiple warheads, building out hypersonic missiles capable of attacking the United States within an hour and traveling at 6,000 mph, building cruise missiles that can navigate around our radar and our defenses and building submarines that can sneak up on our shores and worse yet, building space weapons. It is time that we change that equation and start doubling down on the protection of the homeland.

Yet what General Guetlein calls “keeping the peace overseas,” is in reality the United States encroaching along the borders and shores of nations like Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea.

This includes the stationing of not only missile defense systems like Patriot, THAAD, and the Aegis Ashore system in close proximity to these nations in violation of the ABM treaty the US has since abandoned, but also first-strike offensive weapons like the Typhon missile launcher capable of firing both Standard SM-6 anti-air missiles, but also ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles previously prohibited under the INF treaty the US has also since abandoned.

For example, the US has positioned THAAD systems in both the Middle East and Asia, and its Typhon missile system is currently stationed in the Philippines with additional units on the way, specifically aimed at China.

Beyond the global-spanning military footprint of the United States, Washington is also preparing for or already directing multiple proxy wars against these nations.

The conflict in Ukraine was entirely engineered by the United States beginning with Kiev’s political capture in 2014, the training and arming of Ukraine’s military, and the capture, reorganization, and direction of Ukraine’s intelligence agencies by the US Central Intelligence Agency.

The US has been waging war and proxy war against Iran for decades including invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq right on its borders, invading and overthrowing the government of Iran’s ally Syria, the waging of war on Yemen-based Ansar Allah - also an Iranian ally. The US also maintains constant financial, political, and military support for Israel which has repeatedly attacked Iran and its allies.

And despite officially recognizing Taiwan as part of “One China,” the United States has continued supporting separatist political parties administering Taipei, is arming local military forces, and is even stationing US troops on the island province itself.

All of this has forced Russia, Iran, China, and other nations to respond by bolstering military spending, increasing research and development into missile technology, and the creation of credible deterrents against decades-spanning US aggression and proxy war along and even within their borders.

While the Trump administration depicts the Golden Dome as necessary to “forever end the missile threat to the American homeland,” it is instead being built to enable the US to forever threaten other nations around the globe with its missiles.

Dubious Claims About Golden Dome’s “Near 100%” Success

At one point during the Golden Dome’s announcement, US President Trump would claim:

I will tell you an adversary told me, a very big adversary told me the most brilliant people in the world are Silicon Valley. He said, "we cannot duplicate them. We can't.”

He also claimed:

We have things that nobody else can have. You see what we've done helping Israel. You probably wouldn't have in Israel. They launched probably 500 missiles all together and I think one half of a missile got through and that was only falling to the ground as scrap metal.

Except none of this is true.

If President Trump is referring to the 2024 Iranian retaliatory strike on Israel, up to 200 missiles were fired, with dozens if not scores of them circumventing Israeli missile defenses and striking targets including dozens striking and damaging Israel’s Nevatim Airbase alone, according to NPR.

No air or missile defense system has a “success rate close to 100%.”

While any particular system may have a “success rate close to 100%” intercepting individual targets, retaliatory strikes are planned specifically to include a large enough number of missiles, drones, and other projectiles to saturate a defense system’s ability to intercept them all during a single attack. This means that while many incoming targets will be intercepted, many others will not and critical targets will inevitably be struck and destroyed.

Regarding the state of US missile defense technology, unless President Trump is referring to undisclosed innovations, nothing the US currently is known to possess in terms of air and missile defense systems consists of “things that nobody else can have.”

And while in the past Silicon Valley drove unparalleled advances in technology contributing to a decisive military advantage for the US, the gap has since drastically closed and in some instances is widening in favor of nations like Russia and China.

The conflict in Ukraine, for example, has demonstrated glaring Russian advantages in several key areas that void the entire premise the Golden Dome is predicated on. Russia has demonstrated that it is capable of producing both larger quantities of ballistic and cruise missiles as well as layered integrated air defense systems and at a fraction of the cost the US and its European partners spend on arms and ammunition production.

Russia’s advantage is so great, it prompted the first ever US National Defense Industrial Strategy in 2022.

The paper admitted the US (and the rest of the collective West) suffers from a bloated, inefficient military industrial base incapable of meeting the demands of the type of large-scale, high-intensity, protracted warfare taking place in Ukraine and likely to take place in future conflicts with either Russia or China.

As previously reported, the paper lays out a multitude of problems plaguing the US military industrial base including a lack of surge capacity, an inadequate workforce, overdependence on off-shore downstream suppliers, as well as insufficient “demand signals” to motivate private industry partners to produce what’s needed, in the quantities needed, when it is needed.

In fact, the majority of the problems identified by the report involved private industry and its unwillingness to meet national security requirements because they were not profitable.

Nations like Russia and China do not rely on private industry partners for national defense programs. Much of the industrial power researching, developing, and mass-producing arms and ammunition in these countries takes place within state-owned enterprises. Because national defense is the chief priority of these enterprises, money is invested whether it is profitable or not.

This is what allows Russian and Chinese industry to maintain huge workforces, facilities, and tooling even when production is reduced, while private industry in the West would slash all three to maximize profitability. The first model allows a nation to surge the production of arms and ammunition on short notice - the other requires strong enough “demand signals” to justify the time-consuming process of building up the levels of all three - a process that can take years.

None of the problems described regarding the US military industrial base have been addressed since the National Defense Industrial Strategy was published in 2022. Corporations like Lockheed, Raytheon, L3Harris, and newer companies like Anduril slated to play a role in the proposed Golden Dome system continue to pursue a strictly for-profit model that will create the same disparity in quantity and quality seen playing out on and over the battlefield in Ukraine.

This leaves the likelihood the Golden Dome - like all other modern US military programs - will fall far short of stated expectations because of the fraud, waste, and abuse that defines US military industrial production.

The ultimate irony is that while the Golden Dome is sold to the public as “protecting” America, vast sums of public money that could actually improve the lives of Americans at home through infrastructure, education, and healthcare, will instead by siphoned off by demonstrably incompetent and corrupt arms manufacturers, all in an attempt to enhance Washington’s ability to menace the rest of the world with greater impunity - not protect the US at home.

The rest of the world will predictably react to the Golden Dome by creating their own means to defend themselves and retaliate against the US if attacked, making Americans not only less safe, but in the process of building the Golden Dome, less prosperous.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

US War on Yemen Exposes Limits of American Military Might

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Sun, 8 Jun 2025 03:30:00 -0700

May 13, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Yemen, a nation of approximately 40 million people, is one of the poorest nations on Earth. It has suffered decades of political instability including a US-engineered regime change operation in 2011 followed by a nearly 7 year long war with a US-armed and backed Saudi-led Persian Gulf coalition. The war included air strikes and a ground invasion along with economic sanctions and a naval blockade. Subsequently, the UN has declared Yemen to be one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises with up to 14% of the population displaced by conflict.

Since then, the US has carried out direct attacks on Yemen. Both the previous Biden administration and now the current Trump administration have carried out military campaigns in a bid to subdue Ansar Allah (often referred to as the “Houthis”) - the military and political organization administering Yemen’s capital and surrounding cities along the nation’s western coast.

The most recent military campaign has included strikes on civilian infrastructure including a major port and reportedly a reservoir.

Leaked messages between the US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the US Vice President and other senior officials reveal the deliberate targeting and complete destruction of residential buildings to kill a single suspected enemy individual.

Despite the tremendous power of the US military and the protracted brutality the US has applied to Yemen, Ansar Allah remains a viable political and military organization. It continues to target and destroy US drones conducting surveillance and attacks in Yemeni airspace, as well as targeting US warships in the Red Sea, amid a much wider blockade Ansar Allah has placed on Israeli-bound vessels and now US oil shipments.

While Ansar Allah has regularly claimed to have targeted and forced US warships to flee, a recent CNN article appears to confirm that indeed drones and anti-shipping missiles targeting US ships have not only forced them to take evasive maneuvers, they have also caused material losses including a $60 million F-18 warplane.

The article admits:

A US official said initial reports from the scene indicated the Truman made a hard turn to evade Houthi fire, which contributed to the fighter jet falling overboard. Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed on Monday to have launched a drone and missile attack on the aircraft carrier, which is in the Red Sea as part of the US military’s major operation against the Iran-backed group.

Other Western media outlets have admitted the loss of multiple $30 million drones over Yemen. An April 29, 2025 article by France 24 reported that the US had lost up to 7 MQ-9 Reaper drones over the previous 2 months.

The drones are used to identify and guide munitions to targets. They have a service ceiling comparable to modern manned warplanes like the US F-35 Lightning. The regular loss of MQ-9 drones over Yemen implies that Ansar Allah possesses air defense systems also capable of reaching altitudes manned US warplanes operate at. This is why the US has failed so far to establish air superiority over Yemeni airspace forcing the US to instead carry out standoff strikes.

Standoff strikes involve the use of long-range precision guided missiles fired far beyond the reach of enemy air defenses. The missiles then travel into enemy airspace to strike their targets. While the obvious advantage of this strategy is avoiding enemy air defenses, there are many disadvantages including the use of standoff munitions which are expensive and made in relatively small quantities. Enemy radar systems can detect stand-off weapons as they travel across their airspace allowing them to potentially intercept the incoming missile. It also provides personnel and equipment time to take cover before the stand-off munitions reach their target.

Western media outlets have reported that Ansar Allah is believed to have surface-to-air missiles from Iran. This includes systems like the Barq-1 and Barq-2 air defense systems. These are comparable to the Russian-made Buk air defense system. While considered a “medium range” air defense system, it is capable of targeting modern warplanes at their maximum service ceiling.

Western media outlets have also noted the US’ use of electronic warfare aircraft against targets across Yemen armed with anti-radiation guided missiles designed to detect and home in on radar signals. Such missiles are used as part of “suppression of enemy air defenses” (SEAD) missions to either force air defense operators to turn off their radar sets to prevent their destruction, or to target and destroy the radar set if they don’t. Whether switched off or destroyed, the radar systems are unable to target and destroy incoming warplanes allowing airstrikes to be conducted.

Despite the simple premise, the detection and suppression of enemy air defense systems as part of SEAD missions is dangerous and complex. The fact that Ansar Allah is still regularly detecting and downing MQ-9 drones means US SEAD missions have fallen short of destroying Ansar Allah’s air defenses and establishing air superiority over Yemen.

The limitations of US military power have been steadily exposed in recent conflicts. The US proxy war in Syria and now its military operations against Yemen has required US warplanes to conduct standoff strikes because of an inability to either destroy or evade Russian and Iranian-designed air defense systems. The transfer of US weapons to Ukraine and their failure on the battlefield there has further exposed the limits of US military might.

Despite this, the US remains a dangerous threat to the nations it targets. In Syria, the US used asymmetric military power in the form of armed militants, economic warfare, and political interference to succeed where its airpower had failed. While the disparity between US military might and that of the nations it targets has narrowed significantly over recent years, its vast array of economic and political weapons remain potent alternatives.

Only time will tell whether the emerging multipolar world can close the gap in regards to these US advantages in the same way it has regarding America’s quickly shrinking military advantages.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

US Ditching Ukraine “Peace Talks,” Predictable Continuity of Agenda Follows

noreply@blogger.com (Land Destroyer) — Sun, 8 Jun 2025 03:27:00 -0700

May 6, 2025 (NEO - Brian Berletic) - Despite running for office promising to resolve the conflict in Ukraine within “24 hours,” US President Donald Trump and the special interests he serves intended before even taking office to continue the war in Ukraine - while also pivoting eastward to pursue a similar conflict with China in the Asia-Pacific region.

This was summarized in corporate-financier funded Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” policy papers published in 2023. Under chapter 4, “Department of Defense,” written by previous Trump administration official Christopher Miller, it noted:

U.S. allies must take far greater responsibility for their conventional defense. U.S. allies must play their part not only in dealing with China, but also in dealing with threats from Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

And that it was important to:

…transform NATO so that U.S. allies are capable of fielding the great majority of the conventional forces required to deter Russia while relying on the United States primarily for our nuclear deterrent, and select other capabilities while reducing the U.S. force posture in Europe.

Just weeks after taking office, and despite the Trump administration insisting it sought an end to the conflict in Ukraine, President Trump’s secretary of defense Pete Hegseth would deliver a contradictory directive to Washington’s European partners in Brussels, explaining:

The U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing tradeoffs to ensure deterrence does not fail.

It also noted:.

As the United States prioritizes its attention to these threats, European allies must lead from the front.

Together, we can establish a division of labor that maximizes our comparative advantages in Europe and Pacific respectively.

To “lead from the front,” Secretary Hegseth urged Europe to spend more on defense including spending up to 5% of each nation’s GDP on NATO as well as for Europe to “double down and re-commit” to “Ukraine’s immediate security needs,” as well as expand Europe’s defense industrial base.

More alarmingly, Secretary Hegseth called for European troops to serve as “peacekeepers” in Ukraine as part of a non-NATO security guarantee.

While Secretary Hegseth specifically said during his remarks in Brussels that “this must not be Minsk 3.0,” what he was describing couldn’t be called anything else.

The obvious intention was to freeze what was and still is a failing US proxy war against Russia, with European troops sent into Ukraine to deter further Russian advances. With the conflict frozen, the US and Europe could rearm, expand their respective military industrial bases, and also rearm and reorganize Ukraine’s armed forces up to and until a point in the future when factors on the ground tilted better in Washington’s favor and hostilities could resume.

A similar strategy delivered success to Washington as recently as last December in Syria where a US-engineered proxy war had raged since 2011. Having failed to topple the Syrian government in the opening years of the conflict, US and Turkish forces invaded and occupied Syrian territory, freezing the conflict and providing the US with time to rebuild and rearm its proxy forces allowing it to make one last and successful push toward Damascus in 2024.

Following Secretary Hegseth’s remarks in mid-February, European nations immediately set out to fulfill Washington’s directive with nations like Germany, the UK, and France pledging to drastically increase military spending, expand military industrial production, and prepare European troops as part of a “coalition of the willing” to enter into Ukraine and create a long-desired Syria-style buffer-zone.

Trump’s Peace Talks Predictably Unravel

Despite Washington’s obvious intentions to salvage and ultimately continue its own proxy war with Russia, the Trump administration posed as “mediators” amid it, attempting to lure Russia into a temporary ceasefire European troops could use as a window of opportunity to deploy to Ukraine.

Washington’s diplomatic efforts were also used to depict the US as seeking “peace” while all other parties - including Russia, Ukraine, and even Europe - were blamed for undermining a possible peace deal.

Russia remained open to negotiations but refused to make concessions that would allow the US to carry out plans to freeze the conflict, rearm Ukraine, and continue the conflict at a later date.

Predictably, with Washington’s empty negotiations having run their course, the Trump administration has finally and openly picked up where the Biden administration left off, preparing tens of millions of dollars in arms deals with Ukraine in addition to US-based arms manufacturers selling weapons to Europe to then transfer to Ukraine.

A pause in large-scale Ukrainian drone and missile attacks using Western arms, enabled by US military assets, and directed by US military commanders - as reported on by the New York Times - has ended, with a wave of strikes targeting Russia including the use of several British Storm Shadow cruise missiles. This is likely to continue in the weeks and months ahead along with continued attempts to pressure the Russian economy through additional sanctions as well as pressure placed on nations continuing to trade with Russia.

Russia’s Slow and Steady War of Attrition

Russia, for its part, is continuing its strategy of attrition. The Wall Street Journal admits that Russia’s military industrial base continues to expand, with over 300 T-90 main battle tanks alone produced each year - up from just 40 in 2021. Artillery pieces and rounds are also being produced in greater numbers alongside at least as many drones as Western sources claim Ukraine is producing or acquiring.

While missiles are not mentioned by the Wall Street Journal, strikes across Ukraine have steadily increased, indicating cruise missiles and ground-launched ballistic missiles like the Iskander are likely being built in the dozens each month.

The same article admits that Russia’s armed forces are recruiting anywhere between 30,000 and 40,000 soldiers each month. The Wall Street Journal admits this additional manpower allows troops to rotate on and off the battlefield - a luxury Ukrainian troops do not enjoy. Troop rotations and a large reserve allows for longer and better training. Ukraine’s inability to recruit or press into service sufficient numbers of troops is a contributing factor to declining quantity and quality of Ukrainian soldiers, in turn leading to the steady, incremental collapse of Ukrainian lines.

The current trajectory of the conflict appears to lead to an eventual collapse of Ukraine’s fighting capacity, allowing Russian forces to move relatively unimpeded across what remains of Ukrainian-held territory. It is difficult to tell exactly if and when this will occur - however the urgency in Washington and Brussels over the introduction of Western troops on Ukrainian territory to freeze the conflict may point to sooner rather than later.

Determining factors include Russia’s ability to continue sidestepping US-European attempts to undermine its economy including the prospect of Western warships attempting to interdict or blockade vessels transporting Russian hydrocarbons. It also includes Russia’s ability to continue outproducing the collective West in terms of military industrial production. And while Russia appears to be succeeding in regards to the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine, the US continues applying pressure to Russia all along its geographic, political, and economic peripheries.

The 2019 RAND Corporation paper, “Extending Russia,” lays out a long list of “measures” meant as a way of “stressing Russia’s military and economy and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad.” They include “providing lethal aid to Ukraine,” the paper acknowledged could force Russia to “counter-escalate” which it did in 2022, thus precipitating a war the paper warned could, “produce disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows,” and that, “it might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace.”

The paper also suggested “increase support to the Syrian Rebels.” Because the US has applied both of these measures and many others suggested in the paper, Russia has indeed been “extended.” The conflict raging in Ukraine was prioritized by Mocow over the conflict the US also deliberately escalated in Syria, forcing Russia to make the difficult decision of sacrificing one for the other.

In the days, weeks, and months ahead, the US will continue applying pressure not just in Ukraine, but all along Russia’s other peripheries, hoping to create additional dilemmas and difficult decisions for Moscow with the ultimate hope of precipitating a Soviet-style collapse of the Russian Federation itself. The outcome of this strategy will be determined not only by Russia’s ability to counter these provocations, but its ability to cooperate with other nations targeted by the US - including Iran and China - to stabilize and strengthen the emerging multipolar world faster than the US can undermine and destroy it.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.