By George Beebe, Responsible Statecraft, 8/1/26

George Beebe is the Director of Grand Strategy for the Quincy Institute. He spent more than two decades in government as an intelligence analyst, diplomat, and policy advisor, including as director of the CIA’s Russia analysis and as a staff advisor on Russia matters to Vice President Cheney. He is the author of “The Russia Trap: How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe” (2019).

Over the course of a few short weeks, a grim new reality has taken shape in Ukraine.

Russia has shown that it need not conquer and occupy Ukraine’s entire Black Sea coastline to turn that country into the equivalent of a landlocked state. It need only deny access to Ukraine’s critically important Odessa port complex, something it is doing quite effectively through air and missile strikes on port facilities and approaching ships.

That reality will probably not amount to a knock-out blow in the ongoing war. But it is likely to have a profound impact on Ukraine’s already gloomy post-war prospects — and, by extension, on the contours of a new European security landscape in the current conflict’s aftermath.

Only a handful of months ago, Russia was conducting few military operations against Odessa. Early in the war, attacks by Russia and Ukraine on merchant shipping in the Black Sea had threatened to choke off agricultural exports vital to world markets. Under pressure from India and other key partners in the Global South, Moscow agreed to the so-called “Grain Deal” with Ukraine, brokered by Turkey and the United Nations, to allow unimpeded commercial exports from the region.

For some four years thereafter, the Odessa port system remained open to Ukrainian imports and exports, handling some 90% of Ukraine’s agricultural trade. Russian hardliners bristled at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s refusal to attack Ukraine’s vital but vulnerable port, grumbling that Putin seemed more interested in avoiding rifts with Global South states than defeating Ukraine.

Several factors have combined to change this picture. One was the evident failure of the West’s campaign to turn Russia into a pariah state, a brainchild of the Biden administration that had magnified the importance of the Global South to Moscow as a means of avoiding international isolation. A second has been the depletion of Ukrainian air defense interceptors, which has left Odessa largely defenseless against Russian ballistic missiles and allowed bomb-carrying aircraft to operate in closer proximity to the port complex, increasing the accuracy and destructiveness of Russian air strikes.

Ironically enough, perhaps the most important factor was Ukraine’s own “40-day influence campaign” announced in late June, which included long- and medium-range drone strikes on energy infrastructure in Russia and merchant shipping in the Sea of Azov. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the campaign was aimed at “influencing the aggressor state in order to compel it to end the war.” President Trump described it more plainly as an “escalation that we hope will lead to peace.”

In practice, however, the escalation allowed Russia to deflect Global South criticism for violating terms of the Grain Deal by arguing it was Ukraine that had kicked off the recent cycle of shipping and port attacks.

The near-term effects have been disturbingly clear. Since July 22, the Russian military has effectively closed the Ukrainian port complex in and around Odessa to all shipping. The loss of its remaining deep-water ports is already having a devastating effect on Ukraine’s agricultural exports — the backbone of its economy — which officials warn may plummet by 50% in the coming months because alternative land, rail, and river routes have much less capacity and are much more costly.

The damage to Ukraine’s economy probably will be manageable in the near term so long as Europe steps up its flow of aid. But the impact of Odessa’s closure on Ukraine’s post-war prospects may prove to be much more profound.

It has long been assumed in both Washington and Europe that the main alternative to a compromise settlement of the Russia-Ukraine war is the transformation of Ukraine into a “steel porcupine.” The concept envisions a heavily armed and fortified Ukraine that can serve as a barrier to further Russian aggression and allow the hot war to settle into a stable, frozen conflict.

Proponents of this vision dismiss prospective “land for peace” deals with Moscow and oppose any quantitative or qualitative limitations on Ukraine’s military — points that Russian officials say are essential to any peace deal — arguing that such concessions would “reward Russian aggression” and prevent Ukraine from becoming an Eastern European variant of Israel, a “Major Non-NATO Ally” that punches well above its weight-class in regional affairs and serves as a keystone of broader European defense plans.

However, if Russia can use air and missile attacks to deny Ukraine the use of its port facilities, it can also prevent Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction and economic revitalization. Just as merchant ships will not risk Russian attacks to enter Odessa, construction firms are unlikely to risk Russian airstrikes in attempting to build or repair bridges, roads, factories, ports, and other vital infrastructure. Nor will investors risk hundreds of billions of dollars if Russian missiles and bombs can destroy any Ukrainian reconstruction project in a matter of hours.

Without large-scale economic reconstruction and the jobs and stability that would follow, few of the millions of Ukrainians who fled the war (most for Europe but many for Russia) will return. Absent mass repatriation, Ukraine is likely to enter a demographic death-spiral. By Ukrainian officials’ own admission, a population that approached 52 million people when the Soviet Union broke up now stands at between 22 and 25 million people, and nearly half of them are retirees.

According to one estimate, Ukraine’s working age population – the backbone of both its civilian economy and its military — could lose an additional third by 2040. The number of children, the embodiment of Ukraine’s future, could decline to half its pre-war level.

This raises an obvious but under-discussed question: How can an aging and dying Ukrainian population, lacking a strong economic base, serve as a “new Sparta” countering a nuclear-armed Russia that is seven times its size?

The closure of Odessa should highlight two salient points for Western leaders. First, neither Ukraine nor the West can eliminate the threat of Russian air and missile strikes through military means alone. Second, Russia will have strong reason to continue them, even after it eventually halts large-scale ground operations, if the Kremlin worries that the West will otherwise turn Ukraine into a safe haven for threatening Russian security.

As a result, the alternative to an uncomfortable compromise settlement of the war will not be a steel Ukrainian porcupine. It will be a weak and dysfunctional rump state that ill-serves Ukrainians and undermines Europe’s broader security.

Interesting in-depth interview.

YouTube link here.

By Sylvia Demarest, Substack, 7/24/26

First a follow up– “The NDAA doesn’t ‘merge’ the US & ‘Israeli’ militaries. Why? Because there is ZERO equivalent law in ‘Israel’. ‘Israel’ gets everything—US data, joint R&D, and supply chain integration. The US gets no matching access to IOF bases, factories, or decisions. It’s an official one-way takeover.”

Introduction

Ray McGovern recently recalled John F. Kennedy’s admonition that a nuclear power should never be put in a position where it must accept humiliating defeat or use nuclear weapons. But what if the nuclear power puts itself in that position? US foreign policy is directing the proxy wars against Russia and on Iran. The US appears to be losing both wars. This means the US must either compromise, accept defeat, or turn to nuclear weapons. The result of using nuclear weapons would be WW3, and the US homeland would not be spared.

This Substack has argued that the goal of US foreign policy, through both Republican and Democratic Administrations, has been to maintain US global dominance and to prevent any challenge to that dominance. On the issues of US Militarism and Military Keynesianism, the US has been ruled by a “Uniparty” funded by the same interests. The US is also burdened by both Neoliberalism that has distorted the US economy, and by Neoconservatism (Neocons) who have pushed the wars on Russia and in the Middle East. Both ideologies are infected by Zionism.

How the Uniparty political dynamic works was clearly illustrated this week when House Democrats voted to direct President Donald Trump to end his illegal war against Iran, when just a day earlier Democrats gave up their best chances to force Trump’s hand after six Democrats provided the decisive votes to pass the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Six Democrats rescued the bill after seven Republicans defected, leaving GOP leaders unable to pass it with Republican votes alone. The bill passed 216–212 thanks to the 6 Democrats. This is not the first time this has happened.

This is how the “Uniparty Kabuki Theater” operates in DC. The pretense that US militarism and these forever wars do not have bi-partisan support is designed to fool political partisans and allow the US to continue these wars of choice. Until the Uniparty era is ended, the risk that the US will resort to using nuclear weapons, rather than compromise or admit defeat, will persist.

The US no longer has the industrial capacity needed to support these wars of choice. Fifty years of neoliberal economic policies, decades of neocon wars and the rise of a FIRE economy has destroyed US industry and industrial expertise. FIRE stands for Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate. Remember the triple issues to be addressed and reformed if our country is to survive; Monopolization, Financialization, and Militarism. This is assuming reform is still possible without collapsing the US economy.

This is not a matter of “good versus evil” as the DC establishment would have us believe. Neither Iran nor Russia are inhabited by “evil people” nor are they led by “evil” leaders. Instead, all of us should be thankful for the patience and restraint shown thus far by the leaders of both countries.

Threats Do Not Win Wars

To its credit, the Trump administration did attempt to end the war on Iran by agreeing to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Unfortunately, enormous concessions were required on Trump’s part to get the Iranians to agree. When the terms of the MOU were revealed, they were so astonishingly one-sided and favorable to Iran that the document was widely described as tantamount to an American surrender. That was the overwhelming verdict of observers, whether supporters of the war or its opponents, whether Americans or Israelis, all of whom generally described the document in such humiliating terms. Outraged Neocon hawks ferociously denounced Trump, even doing so on his own beloved Fox News network. This forced Trump violate the terms of the agreement and resume the war.

Now, an obviously frustrated President Trump has been relegated to making constant threats given the failure of US strategy. Just this week Trump made escalatory threats against nuclear and civilian Iranian targets. Trump added later that the US would destroy an Iranian bridge or power plant each time Tehran’s forces targeted a ship in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump also on Thursday warned the Houthis and Iran that they would face “major military punishment” if the attacks continued and later said “any and all damages done” to ships and cargo “will be paid for by Iranian Money that the United States has in its possession, and control.”

Even if the US tries to bomb Iranian energy infrastructure, attacks on the grid would have limited effects due to decentralization. From Global 21: “To obliterate both the electrical and oil sectors, multiple waves of missiles and guided bombs would be required against each of these targets. We are talking about 6,000 to 10,000 projectiles.”

“The Iranian electric grid is one of the most decentralized in the world, with around 130 to 150 large power plants, primarily gas-fired thermal plants. No single facility dominates large portions of the country’s electricity generation. The largest plant, Damavand near Tehran, has a capacity of approximately 2,868 MW, only about 2.9% of total installed capacity.”

“To effectively paralyze Iran’s electricity supply, an adversary would also need to target the transmission and distribution network, which stretches over 133,000 kilometers, and exceeds 1.3 million kilometers when rural and urban lines are included.”

“Adding Iran’s oil and derivatives infrastructure makes the challenge even greater. This sector includes approximately 350 to 400 main facilities distributed among processing, storage, and export units. These comprise 9 main refineries, 66 drilling platforms, and more than 10 large complexes, occupying a combined area of over 500 km² spread across Iranian territory”.

“To obliterate both the electrical and oil sectors, multiple waves of missiles and guided bombs would be required against each of these targets. We are talking about 6,000 to 10,000 projectiles, attacks that would take weeks. The ammunition simply does not exist in the American arsenal available today, except for short-range bombs. Those short-range bombs would force aviation deeper into Iranian airspace, significantly increasing aircraft losses.”

But the Trump team may go even more directly after the means of survival in Iran, as in water and grain stores. From Brett Erickson on Twitter: “My concern about Trump’s (apparent) willingness to escalate here is what the most likely escalation pathway is”.

“This isn’t about “reopening the Strait of Hormuz”, this is about terrorizing the Iranian civilians. Plain and simple.”

“My concern, however, is that he won’t stop here. Many of the most vicious Iran Hawks, the very same people that have overwhelmingly driven our Iran strategy thus far, are pushing for Trump to go much further.”

“They’re calling for Trump to strike water storage facilities. Wheat storage. To bomb vital economic infrastructure in Iran that would devastate the civilian population. To force inflation to skyrocket, the Rial to collapse, unemployment to wreak havoc.”

Trump posted on his account a video clip from the “Rumble in the Jungle” fight between Muhammad Al and George Foreman back in ’74. Does Trump understand that it is Iran that is playing the “rope-a-dope” strategy?

“This continued escalation is worrisome to markets,” said Bill Campbell, a portfolio manager at DoubleLine. “Oil is spiking at a time when things are much more precarious.” …. “Last time around I was more confident there was an off-ramp for President Trump. This time around it feels much more serious,” he added….

Meanwhile, Fox News is suggesting new war crimes for the US military to commit. Fox News discussion about Iran’s infrastructure: “What do you think we might hit first?” “I don’t know if we’ll hit it first, but the Damavand plant supplies 40% of Tehran’s electricity.”

Trump has abandoned his practice of trying to reassure markets with “A deal is nigh!” patter either directly or through anonymous sources to Barak Ravid of Axios. He is instead using Axios to signal his commitment to more violence against Iran, with no consideration for collateral damage. From Exclusive: Trump “close” to decision on “massive attack” on Iran: “President Trump told Axios on Thursday that he’s seriously considering restarting major combat operations in Iran— including strikes that would be bigger than the ones carried out during Operation Epic Fury.”

The war on Iran has the feeling of “Déjà Vue Biden” after the Neocons were unable to end the failed Ukraine war, and now an increasingly frantic Trump and his Neocons are equally pushing the war on Iran despite a failed strategy. These two old decadent men were pushed by an irresponsible apparatus to double down on their mistakes. Meanwhile, even the CIA assesses that Trump’s nightly bombing campaign is completely failing to move Iran.

The Strait of Houmuz

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝗻-𝗻𝗲𝗴𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲: “The strait was never about America’s fuel. It is about America’s POWER and naval supremacy at sea, and on that ledger it is non-negotiable”.

“One. Naval supremacy itself. For 75 years the US Navy’s core claim has been that it CAN and WILL keep any sea lane open at will. If it cannot reopen Hormuz to what it was before the war, that claim is broken in front of the whole world. The day America is seen to fail at a chokepoint is the day the actual decline of its command of the seas begins, visibly, everywhere at once.”

“Two. The USD dollar. A contested strait lets Iran keep selling oil priced in Chinese yuan or barter or anything outside the dollar system entirely. Every barrel settled in yuan or anything else is a small hole in the reserve currency that underwrites American superpower status. Left open, that hole widens, and others follow through it. “

“Three. The credibility of the guarantee. Every ally that shelters under American protection is watching one test. Can Washington still deliver? Fail at Hormuz and the Gulf, Asia and Europe all quietly begin pricing a world where the guarantee is soft. This is also why Europe is on the sideline waiting and watching… Four. The precedent. If Iran, a mid-power, can close a chokepoint against the US Naval superpower and make it stick, every rival with a strait of its own takes note. Bab al-Mandeb. Malacca. The lesson travels instantly and it has”

The US Does Not Have the Industrial Capacity to Sustain These Wars

According to the Financial Times: Europe and the US would have to invest $23.6 trillion over the next 25 years to “end their reliance on China in critical industries such as manufacturing and technology, and to replicate China’s infrastructure, research, software, manufacturing and supply chain advances. Meanwhile, during those 25 years, the Chinese will have advanced into another stratosphere entirely.” The conclusion: the west can no longer win the race for industrial competence. This is an indictment of militarism and the entire strategy behind US foreign policy and NATO, especially since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The US and NATO spent too much on militarism and war, and too little on planning, infrastructure, and developing human resources.

Five decades of US neo-liberal deindustrialization destroyed the very foundation of the industry and manufacturing needed to support US global dominance. What neoliberals failed to consider as they off shored US manufacturing was; for every industrial job lost, another 2 jobs would also be lost, along with the skills. The result, entire supply chains decayed or were transferred abroad while industrial machinery and plants rotted away. Neoliberalism threw away what took decades to build.

This entire neoliberal off shoring fiasco was designed to increase corporate profits at the expense of labor. The result has been the destruction of both the US industrial base and the knowledge base of US labor that is needed to rebuild.

US corporate management is indoctrinated to believe that labor is just a cost factor. The impact of this indoctrination can be seen in the decades of layoffs, wage cuts, union-bashing and the crushing of real wages. The effort to rebuild the US industrial base now confronts, not only the cost, but a skills and a wage gap. The “old hands” who could have handed knowledge over to the younger workers have either retired or been let go decades ago. The US education system is not designed to teach the skills that would be needed to construct the new factories. Elon Musk promises to build robots to do the job but who will run the robots?

Let’s look at the impact on weapons systems: Here’s CBS News: Rapid pace of interceptor and precision-guided weapons use worries Trump administration: “Washington — The rapid pace at which the U.S. is expending some of its most advanced air-defense interceptors and precision-guided weapons in the Middle East is a point of great tension inside the Trump administration as President Trump’s war with Iran ratchets up again, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials familiar with internal assessments. And it’s raising broader concerns about America’s readiness for a potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific. The dwindling stockpiles of defensive interceptors and long-range missiles have become a pressure point for top military and civilian leaders who are weighing the demands of the war with Iran against maintaining readiness to deter other adversaries, including China.”

—the U.S. cannot sustain the rate at which it expended precision munitions early in the campaign against Iran. The defense industrial base is not equipped to produce missiles rapidly enough to replenish munitions that have been fired or transferred to U.S. Central Command,

…..One partner country told CBS News there is a need for a pause in fighting, particularly given the intensity of Iranian strikes that have been battering Kuwait and Bahrain……

….Taken together, the numbers suggest that the central problem is not simply cost but time. Many of the weapons being fired in weeks or months cannot be replaced for years.

The US/Ukrainian Drone and Kerosene Drone War against Russia

Ukraine, with US targeting support, is sending hundreds of drones into Russia every day. While many are being shot down, Russia is a huge country so many still get through. Some of these drones are loaded with kerosene and are designed to start fires. One of the targets has been the e-commerce warehouses of Russian e-commerce company, Wildberries, as well as other warehouses. Several warehouses have burned.

My good friend, Regis Tremblay now lives in Yalta, Crimea. He reports almost daily drone attacks from early evening until dawn keeping everyone awake. The strikes included power stations and have resulted in fires and a loss of power. This is a new development in this part of Russia. Regis is very concerned about the direction of the war and the reaction of the Russian public to these drone attacks.

Reports indicate that many of the Russian refineries struck weeks and months ago are now being brought back into operation, with Russia’s fuel issues improving in many regions, which Putin himself has announced. The same goes for the “Crimea isolation” operation, as Russia is creating redundant roadways and repairing damage to allow normal traffic and cargo flows to resume. In fact, Reuters reports that Russian oil and gas revenue is up 60% year to year.

Reports also show the Russian military advancing in the Donbass and across Ukraine. This indicates that the US and Zelensky are using the drone war to try and increase civil discontent against President Putin. The risk is that instead Zelensky will ignite more fury against Ukraine amongst Russia’s civilian population, hardening—rather than dissolving—their morale.

The drone war against Russia grain shipments has also gone badly as Russian retaliation shuts down Ukraine’s ports. As of July 23, the movement of ships to Ukraine’s Black Sea ports has been suspended due to the threat of Russian attacks. Port Authorities have said of the shipping suspension: “This is a decision made by the shipowners, as the government has not imposed any restrictions,” said Vysotsky”.

Ukraine is only able to effectively reroute 1/5th or 1/6th of the cargo from these ports, implying major economic losses to the Ukrainian state which has become one of the primary issues of debate.

Despite all these spectacular drone attacks, the question remains; is Ukraine down to its last few cards, and it is using them out of desperation?

US Bases are Vulnerable

By utterly destroying all the US military bases inside its missile range, Iran has exposed a weakness that will cost the US dearly: Iran has now showed that those bases are not only vulnerable, but they are also an immense liability for the host countries. The war on Iran has shown that their existence is not to protect the host countries, it is to support US interests. The US military was apparently so convinced that no one would dare to attack any of its foreign bases that it failed to provide them with any kind of defense systems.

The US has some 800 foreign military bases around the world. Are they all completely defenseless?

What about what domestic bases? Are they defended by impressive systems or is the US mainland also defenseless? If so, what are these billions being spent on?

Momentum is Waning

Bloomberg has pointed out that momentum stocks are beginning to sell off while the broad market continues to rise.

When Jeremy Grantham was asked for signals of an imminent bubble bursting, he told us back in June that “one of the most reliable things to watch out for is when leaders of the previous bull market start to underperform while the overall market continues to rise. As he described it, this pattern reflects a shift in investor behavior — one where participants remain invested in the overall market but are shifting out of the riskiest stuff and into safer, more-established companies, which temporarily masks the underlying weakness in the headline index.”

By Ben Aris, Intellinews, 8/6/26

This is not how it was supposed to go. During the Cold War the two sides of capitalism and communism were openly threatening each other with nuclear annihilation. Yet, diplomats worked hard to prevent that by building a comprehensive security infrastructure, starting with the 1972 ABM treaty (Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty). And it worked very well.

Then post-Cold War, when the socialist experiment collapsed and the world was united under a single ideology for the first time ever, it was supposed to be the start of the golden age of international happiness and the “rules-based order” of peace and prosperity.

That didn’t happen, eh? After the chaos of the 1990s, following the collapse of the old system in the East, there was a brief decade in the noughties when the capitalists stampeded into the Emerging Markets – the peak of the “globalisation” – where it did appear that it was going to work.

But almost immediately it started to fall to pieces. While the noughties brought prosperity and growth to most EMs (which is still going on), as they added economic muscle, by the end of that decade they started to add political muscle too.

The rising Global South became increasingly dissatisfied with being the second cousin in a two-speed world, with no say, while the “Developed World” continued to dictate the terms – manifest in the Global North’s propensity to hit other countries with sanctions for their misdemeanours like anti-gay laws or weak democratic institutions, when the West was far from perfect.

Then there were the blatant self-serving biases baked into this “us and them” global order. The CIA interfered in over 70 elections during the 35 years of the Cold War, the Washington Post has reported, during the course of which it tried to topple between 15-20 democratically elected governments (historians debate the actual number) simply because they were not pro-American enough. The most famous example in my world is Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovych. Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro probably counts as another. And now the US is backing Israel to the hilt despite the fact that the UN has officially condemned what it is doing in Gaza as “genocide.” That is not how the rules-based order is supposed to work. “For my friends everything. For my enemies the law.” That can now be updated to a “sniper’s bullet to the head of my baby” instead of sanctions laws. That is where we are now.

But the golden era actually began to unravel at the start of the noughties not at the end. George W Bush unilaterally withdrew from the granddaddy of security deals, the ABM treaty, in 2002. There was no need for this. The nukes were still there. The threat of Mutually Assured Destruction was still real. Yet, for no good reason, Bush nixed the treaty – largely because he could. I won’t go into an analysis of the whys, but the bottom line is this decision was massively destabilising. I remember at the time, the Russians were completely freaked out but as the country was flat on its back, there was little the Kremlin could do about it. It did, however, set the US and Russia on a collision course that ultimately culminated in the invasion of Ukraine – a Nato membership issue, is tied to the lack of the Cold War security infrastructure as Russia felt vulnerable to Nato missiles stationed in Ukraine in the same way as they had been placed in Poland and Romania thanks to the end of the ABM.

The rules-based order has broken down completely now, along with the death of that security infrastructure. Following the nixing of the ABM treaty, both sides pulled out of one after another treaty, culminating in the expiration of the START deal this year – briefly renewed by US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2021, after Biden took office. (Biden was a critic of the decision to pull out of the ABM when it came up in 2002. Putin is also keen on restarting all those Cold War-era missile agreements. And even Trump was a fan, at least during his first term in office.)

Now we live in a far more dangerous world than when I was a boy in the 1970s. Nuclear sabre rattling has become part of the muzak. Putin got a lot of flak for tinkering with Russia’s nuclear weapons concept, watering down the restrictions on a first strike to a mere “existential threat” to Russia’s sovereignty – without defining what that means. So it could mean anything. He also pulled out of the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty in 2023, which clears the way for a European war.

It’s Hiroshima Day today; I used to live a couple of years in Japan, and this was always a very solemn occasion for good reason. Yet, the US has chosen this week to update its nuclear policy for potential regional conflicts with Russia or China that explicitly weighs the use of shorter-range tactical nuclear weapons. This is the new black for nuclear stand-offs: the potential use of a “tactical” nuke. That means a small one that has less blast power than the largest conventional bombs like the MOABs the US has, so that you can use it but avoid a nuclear exchange – or so runs the theory. Analysts have speculated that the Kremlin might drop a very small nuke and flatten half of Kyiv to bring the war to an end, banking on the fact that the US would not respond in kind.

But both sides are slowly drifting via a series of baby steps towards a new nuclear arms race. The new nuclear policy comes on top of Trump’s abandoning the rules-based order ideas and adoption of his mercantile transactional thinking that is a throwback to the nineteenth century. He then codified that in December with the new National Security Strategy (NSS) that is also a regression to the Monroe Doctrine, or as wags have dubbed the new version, the “Donnie Doctrine.”

And this escalation is not limited to just the classic Russia-America pair, which have about 3,000 war heads each. One of the really big lessons from the Ukrainian war is: “If you have nukes, then the Global North will never attack you.”

At the start of the Ukraine war Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in the first weeks that Nato would support Ukraine fully, but the “first priority is to avoid WWIII.” That led directly to the “some, but not enough” weapons supply policy that will probably end with Ukraine’s defeat at Russia’s hands this winter.

The same logic applies to the Iranian war, where the US openly flew F-16s alongside its Israeli colleagues to bring down the swarm of missiles and drones in the hot phase of the war. The US would never dare to fly one of its F-16 over Russian airspace in support of a Ukrainian military operation for fear of sparking WWIII. It’s no wonder that Iran wants to build a nuclear bomb and why Israel and the US are so fixated on stopping it.

It also explains the massive destruction from the invasion and war with North Korea.

Ah. There hasn’t been a North Korean war, has there? And if there was ever a country that deserved military action to impose the rules-based order, then North Korea is it. But Kim Jong Un reportedly has 50 nuclear warheads. You get the point.

Unnoticed, the new nuclear arms race has actually already begun. China got its first Bomb in 1964, almost two decades after the Manhattan Project, and is now up to 600, with planes to get to 1,000 by 2030. It is also rapidly developing a whole new class of hypersonic missiles and its navy is already bigger than America’s.

And you can be sure that there are plenty of countries in the Global South now who are at least actively studying the issue. Amazingly, Germany is also toying with the idea of moving in under the French nuclear umbrella.

Moreover, the proxy war being fought between the Global North and the Global South on the territory of Ukraine – because that is what it is – has already pushed the three non-aligned nuclear powers of Russia, China and North Korea into the rapidly militarizing CRINK alliance (China, Russia, Iran and North Korea) as we have reported. That should be very worrying indeed – between them they have half of the world’s men under arms. Last week, China reportedly sent 16 giant cargo plans to Tehran packed with hypersonic missiles and other military goodies ahead of the mooted US invasion. This is no longer passive support.

On this day, of all days, we should be focused on the unbearable cost of nuclear war. The answer is not just to put all the Cold War security infrastructure back in place (although that would be a good start) but to erect a new post-Cold War global security deal. Nato is obsolete and falling apart anyway thanks to Trump. As we reported, the Russians already suggested a new pan-European security deal in 2008, but it was immediately binned by the EU.

The end of the Ukraine conflict would be a golden opportunity to do this. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy refused the Kremlin-backed 27-point peace plan (27PPP) deal last December because he cannot give up territory in Donbas without a real security deal for Ukraine. That deal will still be necessary in a post-war scenario; and I highlight that the Kremlin is asking for the same thing for the same reasons – Putin wants to avoid the possibility that a new Democrat administration simply starts funding a new Ukrainian effort to expel Russia from its occupied territories in a few years’ time. I’m pretty sure that most of the Global South would happily sign up too. It should be a no-brainer, but we will all have to persuade the Americans. And that remains the only country ever to have dropped a nuclear weapon on another country. Ask the Japanese.

***

House passes requirement to build more than 200 plutonium nuclear warhead cores annually by 2050

By Los Alamos Study Group, 7/23/26

Contact: Greg Mello: 505-577-8563
Permalink * Prior press releases and backgrounders

Albuquerque, NM — Plutonium warhead cores (“pits”) are the primary fissile components of all U.S. nuclear weapons. 

Since pit production ceased at the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver in 1989, the U.S. has not had a factory to make these components. A $60 billion effort is underway to provide for not just one but two such factories, one at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and another to follow at the Savannah River Site (SRS) (“Plutonium “pit” production now a $60 billion program — $20 billion down, $40 billion to go,” Jun 8, 2026). 

On June 15, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) reported out its proposed fiscal year (FY) 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA, H.R. 8800), which contained, at Section 3111 (p. 1478), this pit production requirement: 

“Consistent with the requirements of the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Energy shall ensure that, by not later than 2050, the nuclear security enterprise has the capability to reliably produce no fewer than 180 war reserve plutonium pits annually.’’

Yesterday, (Wednesday July 22), the House passed H.R. 8800 with amendments. While the final (“engrossed”) version of the bill as passed is not available at congress.gov as of this writing, there were no floor amendments offered to change the pit production capacity requirements that were written into the HASC version. 

The corresponding Senate version of the FY27 NDAA (reported from Committee on 6/15, not yet debated or passed in the Senate) is silent on pit production requirements. 

Current statutory pit production requirements top out at 80 pits per year (ppy) by 2030. There are no statutory production requirements beyond that year. 

The statutory pit production requirement to make 10 pits was not met in FY24; one pit was made. The number of pits made in FY25 and so far in FY26 are classified. 

The FY26 NDAA, at Section 3112, requires that LANL acquire the capability to produce at least 30 pits per year (ppy), and SRS acquire the capability to produce at least 50 ppy. 

The word “capability,” as used in the FY26 NDAA and in the proposed FY27 NDAA, is not the same as actual production, and is open to some interpretation. For its part, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous subset of the Department of Energy (DOE) that designs and builds nuclear warheads, recently wrote that the requirement to have the “capability” to produce 30 ppy at LANL could be satisfied by the actual production of as few as 10 ppy (see p. S-12, Draft Plutonium Pit Production Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement). 

In addition to statutory requirements, there are also executive branch requirements. The latter have recently more than doubled for near-term production (that is, production at LANL) (“Responsive Today, Dominant Tomorrow: Enhancing American Nuclear Dominance:” Nuclear agency outlines ambitious near-term goals for nuclear warheads, labs, factories, and operations; Pit production at Los Alamos to be at least doubled if not tripled; other NNSA sites to help Los Alamos do so, details TBD, Feb 23, 2026). At SRS, production is slated to occur no earlier than 2035. 

In the HASC, the new pit production requirement first appeared in the “Chairman’s Mark,” which anonymizes behind-the-scenes authorship. No amendments were offered in committee to change it. Representative Garamendi offered an amendment to compare the estimated cost of the new requirement with the cost of current requirements, but this was voted down 25-31, possibly because it is impractical to estimate the cost of anything so vague and distant in time. 

Conversations we held on Capitol Hill in late June did not shed light on the origins or rationale for this proposed requirement. 

Last year, the Senate attempted to write expanded pit production requirements into law while also loosening near-term requirements (that LANL was unlikely to meet in any case) (“Senate bill would relax near-term production deadlines for nuclear warhead cores at Los Alamos, double outyear production requirements for Los Alamos, and cement Savannah River’s production role,” Aug 15, 2025). 

The House did not concur and pit production requirements remained the same, apart from the new requirement previously mentioned in Section 3112, which in effect created for the first time a statutory requirement to complete the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SRPPF), the facility at SRS where pits are to be made. 

In order to “reliably produce no fewer than 180 war reserve plutonium pits annually,” the average production level will need to be significantly higher than 180 ppy. NNSA has quantified this average on more than one occasion, as explained here. A minimum production rate of 180 ppy would certainly lead to an average production rate in excess of 200 ppy, mostly likely well in excess of that figure if two sites are producing, as Dr. Verdon of NNSA once explained. 

Study Group director Greg Mello:

“We do not yet know the views of key senators regarding this dramatic proposed increase in nuclear weapons manufacturing capacity — including the senators from New Mexico and South Carolina. The geopolitical, fiscal, and environmental implications of this proposal are very great. Not just the senators but the representatives from the sites involved should be questioned and their views be made known.

“In New Mexico, journalists tend to treat our senators like kings. Nobody puts them on the spot about so-called national security proposals such as this. This topic is apparently too “hot” to handle. We aren’t sure if the news media fears some kind of retribution beyond social shunning, which is to be expected and comes with journalism territory. 

“The ‘2050’ date is as curious as the enormous proposed production capacity. That is a long time from now. It would allow time for a brand-new pit factory to be built at LANL, should it be decided to do so and assuming such a thing were even possible, which, after our own extensive analysis, we doubt. There is also considerable grassroots opposition to pit production in New Mexico. 

“Even to propose such a production ramp-up damages U.S. security and its international reputation. Nuclear peers will wonder what in the world the U.S. is up to, and countries without nuclear weapons will wonder whether the U.S. is even remotely interested in keeping its nonproliferation pledge.

“Thirty years ago this month, the International Court of Justice concluded that ‘[t]here exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.’ That legal obligation derives from Article VI of the NPT, a U.S. law since 1970. The House is proposing a lawless law. 

“This particular section of the proposed NDAA is hardly the worst part. But it is important. It is an attempt to frame and constrain U.S. nuclear weapons policy for the next quarter-century, while literally concretizing today’s nuclear militarism for our children’s children to deal with. 

“In the final analysis, this section proposes a nuclear arms race — as do other sections of both the House and the Senate versions of the FY27 NDAA. It’s all about the contractors, all about pork-barrel spending, and all about trying to “dominate” Russia and China. The overall nuclear weapons policies proposed in these bills, and this section in the House bill in particular, are expressions of a Congress that is in the process of losing its mind. Who or what will rein in this madness?” 

By Uriel Araujo, InfoBrics, 7/22/26

The US Pentagon is broken. That assessment, blunt as it is, comes not from external critics but from insiders who have been observing America’s defense apparatus struggle.

As a matter of fact, despite annual spending that now tops one trillion dollars, the US military faces deep fiscal troubles, procurement delays, and systemic issues that have left it lagging in key areas against rivals like China, for instance. Representative Ro Khanna laid this out clearly in a recent Foreign Affairs piece titled “America’s Trillion-Dollar Failure”. In it, the California Democrat argues that the Pentagon’s acquisition system remains stubbornly slow and wildly over budget.

Khanna points to a defense industry consolidated into what he calls an oligopoly. After the 1990s “Last Supper” dinner that encouraged mergers, the sector shrank dramatically. Today, the Big Five (Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman), albeit facing some challenges, still dominate.

The problem is that programs like the F-35 and Ford-class carriers run chronically over budget and behind schedule. China, meanwhile, builds ships at a pace the US can barely match. As reported back in May 2025, China’s shipbuilding capacity actually exceeds that of the US by a factor of over 200, according to the US Office of Naval Intelligence. This gap is striking enough and signals a broader industrial decline that Washington has yet to reverse.

These issues are in fact not new, but they have become increasingly apparent. The crises the US military faces include naval overextension and industrial shortcomings. Back in 2023, Jerry Hendrix (a retired Navy captain, and a senior fellow with the Sagamore Institute) warned in an Atlantic piece that the age of American naval dominance was ending, with the US burdened by debt and land wars, while simultaneously trying to maintain sea power – a geopolitical contradiction between a supposed seapower vocation and “land-based actions”.

These structural weaknesses have tangible consequences today: nowhere is this more evident than in the ongoing conflict with Iran. The Pentagon has put the cost of operations thus far at $37.5 billion, and is running out of cash, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seeking billions more from Congress amid a cash crisis.

At the same time, reports indicate almost 100 troops injured in recent weeks amid Iranian reprisals, including attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGC claims American losses in places like Jordan are underreported. This is a war that has exposed very real American vulnerabilities.

On this topic, different analysts have reached similar conclusions: realist scholar John Mearsheimer has argued that Washington cannot win, as Iran holds escalation dominance through the Strait of Hormuz, missile forces, and the advantages of its size and terrain. He further contends that the US has been forced into concessions because Tehran could impose enormous costs, making regime change or unconditional surrender unrealistic.

Even former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, no realist himself, has told the Financial Times that bombing alone will not force Iran to change course and risks depleting munitions needed for other priorities like China. Thus, the war has accelerated a cash crisis at the Pentagon. Moreover, inventories of precision weapons and interceptors are critically depleted, not only from Iran operations but also from backfilling aid to Ukraine – replenishment will take years.

In addition, there are F-35B radar matters threatening air dominance in the Indo-Pacific. Furthermore, Trump’s high-profile firings are creating leadership instability, as retired admirals have warned. It is an ongoing military crisis.

Fiscal waste worsens the situation: the Department of Defense as a matter of fact has failed no less than seven consecutive audits, with roughly $10.8 billion in confirmed fraud from 2017 to 2024: hundreds of billions disappear into overpriced contracts and legacy systems. The “revolving door” between Pentagon officials and contractors fuels what has been called the military-industrial complex, complete with Deep State connections and shady procurements.

So much for an efficient fighting force; the US has become a warfare state where spending is artificially inflated by benefits, oligopoly pricing, and endemic corruption.

Recruitment adds another layer here: as I commented back in 2023, the all-volunteer force faces serious challenges, with only 23 percent of young Americans aged 17-24 eligible without waivers due to health, weight, and drug issues. Just 9 percent show serious interest in serving. While recent reports note some recovery in numbers under the current administration, the broader societal crisis (involving opioids, a mental health crisis, and deindustrialization) makes sustained manpower uncertain.

America thus relies more on proxies and technology that it struggles to produce at scale.

Khanna and others call for fixes like breaking up oligopolies, divesting legacy programs, and speeding innovation. Yet the deeper issue remains: The US is overextended, deindustrializing, and losing ground in a key conflict, all while its defense apparatus is plagued by inefficiency.

The hard truth is that these challenges represent a structural problem for maintaining superpower status in the long run. Washington’s trillion-dollar machine delivers fewer results than advertised against resilient adversaries. As the Iran war drags on, with tremendous military and economic costs, and Great-Power competition intensifies, America’s appetite for military intervention does not seem to match its actual capacity.