By Kautilya The Contemplator, Substack, 1/7/26

I vividly remember a moment from a graduate seminar in international relations theory that I took at Columbia University in the early 2000s. It was taught by the late Professor Kenneth Waltz, one of the most consequential minds of twentieth-century international politics and the architect of the school of structural realism. I recall the setting. It was late afternoon in March, the light already beginning to fade outside. Eight of us students sat in close proximity around the eminent professor, listening as he spoke without notes, without flourish. There was an unhurried seriousness to the discussion. We moved deliberately through his ideas – structure over intent, power over rhetoric, limits over ambition – and wrestled with the larger questions of an emerging post-September 11 international order and the crises of the time.

It was early 2003. American forces were in Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq was imminent, and although few yet recognized it, the limits of American power were about to be tested. The United States stood at what many believed was the apex of history – triumphant after the Cold War, unchallenged by any peer rival and convinced it was experiencing what Charles Krauthammer famously called the “unipolar moment”.

Yet, Waltz was unimpressed. With characteristic calm, he warned that empires do not collapse because they are weak, but because they become too powerful. An empire, he argued, is an entity that accumulates such vast power that it must continually seek external venues to project it. Power, once amassed beyond what is necessary for defense, demands use. Over time, this compulsion to project power outward becomes unsustainable. Costs accumulate, resistance hardens, domestic foundations erode and decline begins – not suddenly, but structurally.

Waltz walked us through history – the Mongols, the Romans, the Ottomans, the British Empire, the Soviet Union. Each believed itself exceptional. Each believed its dominance reflected permanence rather than circumstance. Each ultimately faded into history. The United States, he cautioned even then, was not exempt. More than two decades later, that warning reads less like theory and more like diagnosis.

Empire, Overstretch and the Structural Logic of Decline

Empires do not fall overnight. Their decline is a gradual unraveling of the foundational pillars of economic vitality, political coherence, military credibility and moral legitimacy. What realism teaches is that decline is not primarily a moral failure, it is structural.

Paul Kennedy articulated this with devastating clarity in his seminal work The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. His core thesis of “imperial overstretch” holds that when a state’s military commitments expand beyond the capacity of its economic base to sustain them, strategic failure becomes inevitable. Military power cannot indefinitely substitute for economic health at home. Eventually, the imbalance asserts itself.

Waltz’s structural realism complements Kennedy’s materially grounded analysis of imperial power. A system dominated by one state becomes unstable not because others are aggressive, but because power itself invites resistance. As Waltz observed, unbalanced power leaves weaker states little choice but to combine against the dominant one. Hegemony, in this sense, plants the seeds of its own unfolding. From Vietnam to Iraq, from Libya to Afghanistan, the American pattern has been consistent in that overwhelming force is deployed in pursuit of political outcomes it cannot sustain.

From Influence to Possession: Venezuela as a Turning Point

If earlier American excesses could still be framed, however implausibly, as misguided attempts to preserve order, recent developments mark a qualitative shift. The US seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro represents not another intervention, but a transition from influence to possession.

This shift was openly acknowledged by President Trump himself. In the press conference that followed Maduro’s abduction, he stated bluntly that the United States would “run” Venezuela. The language is striking not merely for its aggression, but for its candor. There is no pretense of multilateralism, no invocation of international law, no claim of humanitarian necessity. This is empire speaking plainly.

Trump’s threats have not been confined to Venezuela. He has openly floated or threatened coercive action against multiple sovereign states: Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, Iran, Nigeria, Denmark (via Greenland) and Venezuela itself. This is not rhetorical excess but doctrinal candor, treating sovereignty as conditional and force as routine.

The “Donroe Doctrine” and Hemispheric Enclosure

Trump went further still by explicitly renaming the Monroe Doctrine the “Donroe Doctrine”. The original Monroe Doctrine, for all its imperial implications, was framed defensively as a warning against European recolonization of the Americas. The “Donroe Doctrine” strips away even that fig leaf. It asserts that the Western Hemisphere is not merely a sphere of influence, but an exclusive American domain in which Washington will deny extra-hemispheric competitors, explicitly framed by the administration in terms of China and Russia, the ability to base forces or control strategic assets.

Facing declining leverage globally, the United States is attempting to lock down what it still believes it can dominate absolutely – its near abroad. That is not the behavior of a confident hegemon, but one fortifying imperial red lines as its outer perimeter weakens.

Crucially, hemispheric consolidation does not imply a reduction in American ambitions toward Russia and China. Quite the opposite. Even as Europe is rhetorically de-prioritized, the United States remains committed to containing both powers simultaneously, despite the structural contradiction it entails.

Russia and China possess overwhelming military power in regions that are existential to their security – the post-Soviet space for Russia, the Western Pacific for China. Structural realism predicts that great powers will fight hardest, and most successfully, in precisely such theaters. This logic was anticipated by George F. Kennan, the architect of America’s Cold War containment strategy, who warned in 1997 that NATO expansion would be

“the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era”1,

precisely because it ignored how great powers respond when their core security interests are challenged. Russia’s imminent victory in the US-led proxy war in Ukraine is a clear illustration of this principle. Yet, US strategy continues to challenge both states in their core zones while asserting absolute dominance in the Western Hemisphere. This is not balance-of-power logic. It is imperial denial.

Military Power Without Strategic Victory

The United States still commands unparalleled military resources in the form of hundreds of overseas bases, a defense budget exceeding that of the next ten countries combined, and technological superiority across multiple domains, from precision strike and global surveillance to cyber and space. By any material measure, American military power remains immense. Yet, power measured in hardware increasingly fails to translate into strategic success.

The contradiction between US military capacity and strategic outcomes is no longer theoretical. It is empirical. The United States was defeated in Vietnam, despite overwhelming technological superiority. In Korea, Chinese intervention pushed US forces back to the 38th parallel, imposing a strategic stalemate that endures to this day. In Afghanistan, the Taliban outlasted and defeated the most powerful military coalition of the twenty-first century, emerging victorious after two decades of occupation. Most recently, the Houthis in Yemen, a lightly equipped movement, forced the US Navy into a defensive posture, disrupting global shipping and exposing the limits of American coercive power even at sea.

Iraq and Afghanistan

Nowhere is this failure more comprehensively illustrated than in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars that together consumed over $6 trillion and ended in strategic defeat. In both cases, the United States achieved overwhelming tactical dominance through rapid regime collapse, battlefield supremacy and uncontested control of the air, only to discover that none of this produced durable political outcomes. Firepower could not compensate for political incoherence, cultural ignorance or the absence of attainable strategic objectives. Victory was defined operationally, but never resolved politically. That failure was understood even by the regime the United States had just overthrown in Iraq. According to John Nixon, the CIA analyst who interrogated Saddam Hussein following his capture, the Iraqi leader remarked bluntly:

“You are going to find that it is not so easy to govern Iraq…You are going to fail in Iraq because you do not know the language, the history, and you do not understand the Arab mind.”2

It was a realist observation, not a cultural one. Overwhelming force cannot substitute for political legitimacy, local knowledge or societal coherence.

The chaotic withdrawal from Kabul in August 2021 was also not merely a logistical embarrassment or a failure of execution. It was a symbolic confirmation of imperial exhaustion. After twenty years of occupation, the world’s most powerful military exited a country it had fundamentally failed to remake, leaving behind a political order that collapsed almost instantly once American force was removed. The episode crystallized the deeper reality that coercive capacity without political legitimacy produces only temporary compliance, not lasting control.

In each case, the weaker side fought not for advantage, but for survival – a distinction decisive in history. The lesson here is not that American power is weak. It is that power alone does not determine outcomes when conflict becomes existential for the weaker party. When sovereignty, dignity and survival are at stake, materially inferior peoples have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to absorb costs that liberal, post-industrial empires are structurally unwilling, and politically unable, to bear. Time, patience and social cohesion often outweigh technology when war becomes a struggle over existence rather than advantage.

History suggests that empires in decline often double down militarily, not because war works, but because alternatives have narrowed. When diplomacy loses credibility and internal reform proves politically unattainable, force becomes the default instrument. As retired US Army Col Andrew Bacevich has argued, the United States has increasingly come to rely on military power as a substitute for strategy, confusing activity with purpose and motion with direction.3 This addiction to force does not preserve empire. It accelerates its collapse by draining resources, hardening resistance and eroding legitimacy at home and abroad.

In this sense, American military dominance today resembles that of other late-stage empires – formidable in appearance, unmatched in scale, yet increasingly ineffective at shaping outcomes that matter. Power remains vast, but its returns are diminishing and its costs are compounding.

Economic Strain and Political Fragmentation Beneath the Imperial Façade

Kennedy’s framework again proves instructive in assessing the economic foundations of American power. The United States retains an enormous and innovative economy, but the alignment between its domestic economic structure and its global military commitments are increasingly strained.

Decades of de-industrialization have reduced the country’s capacity in key sectors critical to sustained great power competition, even as defense obligations have expanded. Infrastructure investment has lagged behind peer competitors. Income and wealth inequality are returning to levels not seen since the Gilded Age. Public debt has surpassed $34 trillion alongside a defense budget approaching $1 trillion annually.

At the same time, the dollar remains dominant but is no longer uncontested. Efforts by other states to conduct trade outside the dollar system reflect not imminent displacement, but structural adaptation aimed at reducing vulnerability to American financial coercion. No empire in history has sustained open-ended global military primacy without eventually confronting such internal economic tensions.

External projection also requires internal cohesion which is eroding. American politics is defined by polarization, institutional paralysis, contested elections and the normalization of political violence. Congress is dysfunctional, the judiciary is politicized and executive power expands without consensus or legitimacy. An empire divided against itself cannot sustain coherent external power. Its adversaries need not defeat it militarily. They can simply wait.

The Collapse of Dignity: Prestige, Language and the Degradation of High Office

Empires do not decline only through material exhaustion or military failure. They also decay symbolically. Prestige – what earlier generations called gravitas – is not ornamental. It is a form of power. When it erodes, coercion increasingly substitutes for authority, and vulgarity replaces legitimacy.

The conduct and language of senior American political figures in recent years are symptomatic of this deeper erosion of US prestige. The casual use of expletives, threats and street vernacular by White House officials and political elites is not merely a stylistic departure from earlier norms. It reflects the loss of confidence in the moral authority of office itself.

Former President Joe Biden’s public description of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the head of a nuclear-armed great power, as a “pure thug”4 and a “crazy SOB”5 marked a striking break with language historically associated with diplomacy and statecraft. Such language may resonate domestically as cathartic or performative, but in international politics it signals something far more consequential: the abandonment of restraint as a governing principle.

Similarly revealing is the repeated use by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth of the phrase “‘f’ around and find out”6 when referring to matters of war and national security. This expression, drawn from the lexicon of street intimidation rather than strategic discourse, has not only been used verbally but was recently formalized through a White House-released image bearing the label “FAFO”, depicting a stern and confrontational President Trump. The transformation of crude intimidation into official messaging is not strength projected with confidence. It is authority asserted without legitimacy.

Senator Lindsey Graham’s remark that President Maduro’s “a** is in jail where he deserves to be”7 follows the same pattern. Whatever one’s view of Maduro, such language from a senior US senator toward a foreign head of state represents a collapse of the norms that once separated personal contempt from official conduct. The issue is not politeness for its own sake. It is the degradation of institutional voice.

Empires at their height are careful with words. Empires in decline are careless, because they increasingly rely on threat rather than persuasion, and on spectacle rather than credibility.

Prestige as Power and Its Historical Contrast

This degradation stands in sharp contrast to the conduct of earlier American statesmen, particularly during periods of genuine strategic confidence. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who commanded the greatest military coalition in history, spoke with deliberate restraint even toward adversaries. President John F. Kennedy, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, understood that dignity and measured language were not signs of weakness but instruments of authority. The ability to restrain language was inseparable from the ability to restrain escalation.

What distinguished that generation was not moral purity, but strategic self-discipline. Even during moments of acute confrontation, American leaders understood that words carried systemic consequences in that public language shaped alliances, deterrence and legitimacy. The contemporary abandonment of this restraint reflects a deeper truth that declining empires often substitute performative aggression for actual authority. When prestige fades, leaders resort to shock, insult and theatrical dominance to compensate. The language of governance begins to resemble the language of coercion.

From Authority to Intimidation

The significance of this shift should not be underestimated. International order rests not only on material power, but on shared expectations of behavior. When the leading power in the world abandons the norms of diplomatic restraint, respect for office and calibrated speech that it once promoted and largely set the tone for, it accelerates systemic breakdown.

In this sense, the vulgarization of American political language is not an aesthetic complaint. It is a strategic signal. It tells allies that American leadership is increasingly impulsive. It tells adversaries that restraint has eroded and it tells domestic audiences that institutions no longer command respect, only fear or loyalty.

The late American political scientist Chalmers Johnson warned that empires lose legitimacy before they lose capability. The collapse of dignity at the highest levels of American governance is part of that process. When leaders no longer speak as custodians of a republic but as enforcers of an empire, decline has already moved from structure into culture. The loss of prestige is not a side effect of imperial decline. It is one of its clearest early indicators.

Imperial Methods Turned Inward: Blowback, Repression and the Return of Violence

Johnson, in his work Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, also warned that empires unable to sustain dominance abroad inevitably turn coercive inward. Blowback, in his formulation, is not limited to foreign retaliation. It is the internal corrosion of political norms, civil liberties and social cohesion that follows imperial overstretch. The tools developed to control distant populations are eventually redeployed to manage dissent at home.

This pattern is now visible in the United States. Surveillance authorities introduced in the wake of September 11, 2001, have been normalized and absorbed into the permanent architecture of national security law. While some emergency provisions of the Patriot Act have expired, the broader surveillance and security apparatus it inaugurated remains entrenched. Policing has grown increasingly militarized and political dissent is more frequently interpreted through a security lens rather than a constitutional one. Gun violence has reached staggering levels with mass shootings now routine and an unmistakable sign of collapsing social trust.

On university campuses, once bastions of constitutional dissent, in 2024 and 2025, students exercising their First Amendment rights were met with riot police, mass arrests and force. Encampments were dismantled by armed officers. Students and faculty were dragged to the ground, zip-tied and detained. Campuses increasingly resembled occupied zones.

Censorship deepens the crisis. On questions of war and foreign policy, dissent is increasingly stigmatized and, in some contexts, managed through discipline, arrest and surveillance. The resulting social mistrust and polarization accelerate internal turmoil and corrode the legitimacy that sustained external power.

History’s Echoes and the Illusion of Exception

Every empire believes it is different. None are. China’s rise is not the cause of American decline but rather its consequence. Multipolarity itself is not chaos. The latter emerges when a declining hegemon refuses to accept limits.

Decline is not inevitable. Empire, however, is incompatible with renewal. Reversal would require abandoning the doctrines and institutional logic of empire. This would entail scaling back military commitments, restoring economic balance, rebuilding infrastructure, healing social fractures and recommitting to sovereignty as principle rather than obstacle. That would mean choosing republic over empire.

Waltz understood this long ago. Empires do not fall because they are attacked. They fall because they cannot stop expanding. The logic governing the American empire is not unmistakable. Unless restraint replaces compulsion, the United States will follow the same path as every empire before it, not as an exception to history, but as its confirmation.

If you’ve found this analysis valuable, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support directly enables me to devote more time to deep research and long-form writing of this kind, free from algorithms and click-driven incentives.

By Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 1/8/26

There is a tendency in alternative space, and it is tempting, to reframe losses as, in some subtle way, wins. It can help you cope with the downswings in the battle for a more equitable, just and peaceful world, and there have been plenty of those recently.

We’ve seen this play out over Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran, where the optimists amongst us have assured us that, though bloodied, Hamas is still surviving triumphantly in its underground passageways; that Hezbelloh is regrouping in Lebanon; that the complete mess of Syria post-Assad (or Libya, post-Gadaffi, or Iraq post-Hussein) should somehow be comforting. And if that isn’t enough, then we can see how mighty Russia, in its resilient defiance against a quarter-century of NATO provocation in Ukraine and its amazing succession of technological breakthroughs in weaponry (dwarf nuclear reactor technology for the Burevestnik and Poseidon; non-nuclear nuclear-equivalent destructive power in the case of the Oreshnik; hypersonic missiles in the case of the Kinzhal and Zircon), or how mighty China, in its noble defense of its territorial rights to Taiwan and leadership of benevelont infrastructural investments and non-dollar trade throughout the Global South, have finally countered the increasingly brazen, reckless and, yes, stupid and desperate, latter-day US imperialists and their vassals in Europe and elsewhere.

Venezuela is instructive in this instance. On the face of it, what is it about really? The US produces over 13 million barrels per day of oil, so why does it want more of the stuff (Venezuela produces only around one million a day), especially if greater volumes push down prices and lower profit margins for US producers? And wont it take years (ten, some analysts advise) to rebuild the Venezuelan oil industry? What has happened, really, if the “invasion” has simply removed a leader of whom Washington disapproves but leaves the governing machinery intact? And wont the US become ever so much more hated in places like Colombia, Cuba and Mexico, and even by the people of the US itself? Are we looking at an endless succession of Vietnam quagmires? And doesn’t reckless confrontation with Russia and China inevitably escalate tension to the point of a very real possibility of a nuclear World War Three and the effective end of the human species?

Well, it may look crazy, reckless, even satanic, but I regret to say that doesn’t mean it is not going to work for “them” (the Western corporate plutocrats and oligarchs in general, the Trump family and its hangers-on more specifically) and against “us.”

Let’s at least explore at the possible gains for the Trump administration here. First of all, the US has directly commandeered the oil industry of Venezuela. Trump is claiming an immediate benefit of large amounts of oil to be directly shipped to Gulf refineries. Team Trump say they are asserting “complete control” of Venezuelan oil supplies. They say that are going to oversee the sale of Venezuelan oil worldwide, and that they are going to approve sales of oil only if they serve US interest (!). Even more astonishingly, Venezuela is going to have to buy US products with the profits that it earns from these sales. I am not an expert on British imperialism (only its victim, being Irish), but I wonder if this even manages to exceed the extortionate, rapacious seizure of global wealth by the British (fat lot of good that it did, ultimately, for most of the British people, looking at the sad and stale state of the British polity and economy today).

Now, of course, we dont yet know exactly how President Rodriguez is going to react. She started defiant, then she later moderated along the lines of “we’ll cooperate so long as it is within international law,” – which is almost amusing given that absolutely nothing of what is going on accords with international law. But she has an extraordinarily difficult if not impossible balancing act to maintain. For the moment, as I argued yesterday, we are seeing, in place of the usual neocon regime-change shenanigans, something ever weirder, which is regime capture.

And this, so far, is welcome news to the Trump administration, which has not hesitated to exploit this singular moment of gross abuse of a sovereign state to threaten some very vulnerable neighbors. These include Cuba, which was dependent on heavily discounted Venezuelan oil in return for medical, military and other services, and whose capital, Havana, has lately had to tolerate power cuts of ten or more hours a day. Before Cuba can hope for any meaningful respite from Russia and China, if this comes at all, it is clinging desperately to supplies of oil from Mexico, which is another country whose leadership Trump is trying to sabotage on fake pretexts of drug cartels (some of which, like Cartel of the Suns, were established by the CIA when it was using a drug supply line to the US to support its illegal flow of arms to the Contras in Nicaragua and which more recently have been amplified by US complicity in the flow of guns to Mexico).

Misery in Cuba, and the possible fall of the Cuban government, will be a personal victory for Marc Rubio, a child of Cuban immigrants to Florida, long-time host to fanatical anti-Cuban, pro-imperial US policies. Colombia is another case. Its President Petro is due to stand down anyway in a few months’ time, since he is allowed only one term in office but, up until now, it has been expected that the next presidential candidate (Cepeda) to succeed him will be from Petro’s party (Historic Pact).

Trumpian control of Venezuela gives the US a further perch from which to try to push the coming elections in Colombia in a US-friendly direction (the greater likelihood of a return to guerrilla warfare throughout the north of South America, notwithstanding).

Of particular significance, and it is something that not many, if any, commentators have so far chosen to remark on, is the situation in Guyana and its vast Essequibo oil region, accounting for two-thirds of Guyana itself. Since the 1960s (1962 to be precise), Venezuela has reignited claims to the Essequibo region which rest on the disputed arbitration in 1899 under British imperial control of the borders between Venezuela and Guyana. This arbitration Venezuela deems null and void. Especially since major offshore oil discoveries from 2023 by ExxonMobil, the Maduro government has pressed its case vigorously, and the case is still being adjudicated by the ICJ (to which it was referred in 2018). In 2023, the Venezuelan government held a non-binding referendum to annex Essequibo, and Maduro signed a resolution to incororate the territory.

The US has supported the Guyanese regime against Venezuela, and now, with its capture of the Venezuelan government, has put paid to Venezuelan ambitions on Essequibo. Note that the quality of the oil in Guyana is better overall than that of Venezuela: it is much lighter, easier to access and therefore much cheaper to extract. At the moment, even if its reserves are much less than those of Venezuela, Guyana is producing as many millions of barrels of oil a day as does Venezuela and will likely exceed Venezuela in 2026. Venezuelan oil is much thicker, polluted and much more expensive, perhaps ten or more times expensive to extract. This is why US oil companies are less than ecstatic about Trump’s exhortations to them to invest billions in renovating the Venezuelan oil industry. So these poor, put-upon oil giants are demanding financial and other guarantees for whatever investments they make. In the short-term however, it is also relevant that many oil refineries along the US Gulf coast are equipped for handling thick oil (for which there is specific demand in some industries) such as that from Venezuela and in recent years this supply has weakened so that the refineries stand to benefit economically from an upthrust in the availability of supplies of heavy Venezuelan crude.

The US has also asserted control over tanker trade in oil from Venezuela in the case of tankers that have been sanctioned by the US, leading to at least four tanker seizures in recent days. Since some of the tankers in question constitute part of the so-called “shadow fleet” used by Russia to sidestep sanctions on its own oil trade and to get oil to its clients in Asia (notably India and China), the US is now blockading a significant part of Russian oil trade machinery.

The fact that in the case of Bella 1, Russia had reportedly sent a submarine to protect the tanker but that then the tanker was successfully boarded and hijacked by the US is a major humilitation for Russia, further proof, if proof was needed, of Russia’s extreme caution in going to its own and others’ defense anywhere that is not eastern Ukraine. China too is humiliated. Dependent for 75% of its oil needs on foreign supplies, China particularly values its oil imports from Iran and Venezuela and both are now extremely vulnerable. More to the point, its oil purchases with these countries are non-dollar, so that now China is being compelled to do more business in dollars, which forces it to prop up the US empire and help the US solve its debt crisis. Yes, of course, China will first of all look to Russia to replenish what it is no longer being able to count on from Iran and from Venezuela, but there are doubts as to whether Russia can actually handle a significant additional demand of this scale.

Venezuelan oil for the US further improves the bargaining position of the US with respect to whatever oil it does still continue to import even though, of course, the US is a major energy supplier to world markets (including, increasingly, to Europe which, in collusion with the US, is shooting itself in the foot by denying itself access to cheap or much cheaper Russian pipeline or LNG in favor of expensive US supplies). Together with supplies from Brazil (which produces about four million barrels a day, and Argentina which produces about 800,000, and Guyana, which produces about a million), the addition of Venezuelan oil means that the US will be collaborating with – if not dictating to – non-OPEC oil production countries, further reducing its dependence on Saudi Arabia (a BRICS member, currently resuming, we should take note, its bombing of southern Yemen) which produces about nine million barrels a day.

All this, in the graceful language of US official thuggery, helps “extend” (i.e. greatly increases the pressure on) the BRICS countries and the potential of the BRICS to bring about a more equitable world through the annihilation of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Increasingly, the real power of the BRICS is being seen to center in Beijing and in Moscow. But they are not looking so convincing as potentially competent adversaries of the US hegemon as they did. As India tries to navigate between Washington and, particularly, Russia (which continues to be a major oil supplier to India, Trump’s claims to the contrary notwithstanding), the other BRICS countries are looking rather less capable and committed than they have been for some time. Brazil, the enormous, dominating economy of South America, seems incapable of confronting Washington. Iran, with one of the most important oil reserves in the world (producing only four million barrels a day, same as Brazil) now seems highly vulnerable to a further US-Israeli strike, perhaps leading ultimately to regime collapse and it is difficult to sustain faith in Russian or Chinese determination to prevent that from happening.

Like I said, just because they’re stupid doesn’t mean they’re losing.

By Scott Ritter, Substack, 1/5/26

Forces within the US and Russia today openly advocate for the lifting of economic sanctions targeting Russia. But these sanctions are not designed to be lifted for the benefit of Russia, but to exist as a tool designed to bring about the collapse of Russia. The hope of improved economic relations brought on by the end of sanctions is used as a means of leveraging greed and corruption inside Russia in order to bring down the government of President Vladimir Putin. Russia’s best option is to stop advocating for the lifting of sanctions and instead use the existing sanctions as a shield to protect Russia from the inherently corrupting influence of western economies.

I used to hold that sanctions as policy was in fact a statement that there was no real policy in place for the given problem, and that sanctions were simply a mechanism for buying time to consider the options. But the longer I have had to observe US sanctions policy unfold over time, the more I realize that there is, in fact, a method to the madness. Whether this newly discovered intent was in existence when the wide-spread sanctioning of nation states was first employed as a major pillar of US foreign and national security policy, or evolved over time, isn’t the point. The reality is that today sanctions underpin policies of targeted regime change and serve as the primary facilitating agent of such policies.

The primary indicator for this realization is that while sanctions portend to target behavior or policies the United States wishes to see altered, the sanctions are almost invariably tied to a person or persons in power. This linkage almost inevitably means that the desired behavioral modifications sought through sanctions cannot be achieved so long as the targeted persons remain in power.

But such linkage in and of itself does not a policy make. To be effective, a policy must be implementable. And here sanctions bring with them an inherently implementable weapon—human greed. The conventional thinking was that sanctions were designed to compel change from within the targeted nation—punish the people, the people will put pressure on their leadership to effect the necessary changes. But this approach did not achieve the desired results—the case of Iraq stands out, where the regime of Saddam Hussein withstood more than a decade of stringent economic sanctions before being removed by military force.

But lately sanctions have taken on a different character—a commodity, so to speak, part of a transactional approach to policy making which has come to maturity during the second iteration of the Trump administration. Trump has been a master when it comes to employing this new commodity-based approach to sanctioning, slapping sanctions onto a targeted nation, and then holding out the possibility of these sanctions being lifted if certain behavioral benchmarks are met. “We can do business together” has become the mantra of Trump 2.0, a promise of mutually beneficial economic relationships predicated on one side—the sanctioned side—yielding to the demands of the other.

The transactional relationship, however, is never allowed to reach fruition. The promise of economic largesse is instead held hostage to behavioral alterations that cannot be attained because they are linked to the personal and/or political credibility of the targeted personalities named in the sanctions. But the transactions were not designed to enrich the targeted individuals, but rather the class of political and economic elites for whom the targeted individual(s) relied upon for their continued viability as the leader of the targeted nation.

The goal of these new regime-change sanctions is to create leverage inside these elites that can be manipulated by the promise of personal fortune if the impediment to this utopia were only removed from power. There is reason to believe that the promise of economic assistance from the Arab League combined with the lifting of stringent US sanctions created the opportunity for Syrian elites to be bought off, abandoning the former President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, to the wolves when Islamic forces attacked in November 2024.

The recent abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by US forces likewise suggests that there was a significant amount of betrayal by Venezuelan political and economic elites brought on by the promise of the lifting of sanctions against Venezuela once Maduro was removed from power.

Likewise, in Iran President Pezeshkian’s stated objective of wanting better relations with the West, inclusive of economic interaction keyed to the lifting of sanctions, created a certain level of societal expectation which was weaponized by the West, linking the inability to lift sanctions until the Iranian government changed fundamental policies, such as those related to their nuclear program. These Iranian elites, having already begun to spend their new-found wealth in their imaginations, were easy pickings for foreign intelligence services looking for vectors of societal unrest linked to the removal of the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khameini, from power.

But the biggest regime change target of them all is Russian President Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump has made the lifting of sanctions and the renewal of US-Russian economic projects one of his highest priorities—after the ending of the Russian-Ukraine conflict on terms acceptable to Donald Trump. Trump has allowed a dual-track of negotiations to proceed simultaneously, the first involving setting the terms of conflict resolution, and the second focused on the economic benefits that would accrue once the war with Ukraine ended.

The problem is that Trump has no intention of agreeing to terms that would be acceptable to Russia, and every intention of continuing to impose targeted sanctions designed to impact various political and economic elites surrounding Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump has made it clear that he is personally unhappy with President Putin, implying outright that any continuation of existing sanctions and/or issuing of ne sanctions is the fault of the Russian President and no one else.

The hope attached to this methodology is that by dangling the possibility of lifting sanctions in front of these elites, they can be persuaded/influenced to exert pressure on the Russian leadership to change policy goals and objectives or, failing that, to change leadership.

Given everything I have analyzed over the course of the past several days, I am convinced now more than ever that the Trump policy toward Russia is not normalization, but regime change, and that economic sanctions are not viewed as something that is transitory, but rather something that serves as a permanent fixture of policy designed to create the potential for regime change. There are zero advocates for the genuine normalization of relations on Trumps’ innermost circle of advisors. Steve Witkoff, the former New York real estate broker turned special envoy, does not make policy, but rather furthers the possibility of better economic relations once sanctions are lifted—which, of course, they never will.

Marco Rubio, the dual-hatted Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, is staunchly anti-Putin. Scott Bessant, the Secretary of Treasury, believes that Russia can be brought to its knees using sanctions. And John Radcliffe, the Director of the CIA, oversees an agency that has sought the demise of Vladimir Putin and Russia since the fall of Boris Yeltsin.

There are zero advocates for a truly mutually beneficial relationship between the US and Russia in the Trump cabinet today. A relationship built on transparency and mutual trust is impossible so long as one party is actively seeking the strategic defeat of the other.

The strategic defeat of Russia continues to be the policy of the United States.

And economic sanctions are the primary tool being used to achieve this result.

Gone are the days of calling Russia out as the principal opponent of the United States. That action only solidified the United States as an enemy in the minds of those Russians the United States seeks to bring over to our side.

Instead, the United States, by publishing a National Security Strategy document that lists Russia as a force of strategic stability, creates the notion that the path has already been cleared for a revitalized relationship born on the principle of mutual benefit.

But the US-Siberian tunnel that Kirill Dmitriev is fond of promoting isn’t designed to bring American wealth to Russian shores, but rather to extract Russian resources on terms unilaterally beneficial to the United States. Yes, the United States desires a time when sanctions can be lifted, and US businesses can return to Russia. But only on terms acceptable to the United States, and these terms cannot exist in an environment where Russia operates as the geopolitical equal of the United States. Vladimir Putin has spent 25 years leading Russia out of the ruins of the decade of the 1990’s. It is the goal and objective of the United States to return Russia to that period, where Russian nationalism has been subordinated to Western commercialism, where Russian culture and traditions are seen as an expression of inferiority in the face of all that the West can offer.

A new Trump Tower, not the towers of Moscow Center, would be the landmark of Moscow if Donald Trump had his way, with all that entails.

But in the case of Russia sanctions are a double-edged sword. The combined impact of the US-European sanctions is the near total isolation of Russia from the western economy. If Russia continues to play the game of pretending there will be better times ahead once these sanctions are lifted, it is just a matter of time before human greed and CIA money find common cause, and Russia finds itself wracked by internal political disputes designed to weaken it and its leadership.

Sanctions, simply put, are not a path toward prosperity, but a highway to hell.

Russia can isolate itself from the negative consequences of the Trump sanction game simply by refusing to engage on any discussion that doesn’t have the immediate, unconditional lifting of economic sanctions as the core objective. There can be no quid pro quo, no phased easing out—nothing. Anything that creates conditions for the lifting of sanctions provides the US the leverage it needs to start corrupting segments of Russian society, to turn them against the Russian government.

None other than the esteemed Russian philosopher, Alexander Dugin, agrees that Russia faces such a threat today. “Look,” he recently wrote, “friendly regimes and forces are collapsing one after another. Of course, we’re reacting and trying to take advantage of the general crisis of globalism, but we’re missing a lot.

It’s perfectly clear, and this has been confirmed by events in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and now Venezuela, that over the past decades, the West has created spy networks within the highest leadership of all countries. I think even China is no exception. And at the right moment, they activate to betray the supreme power. Such a network simply cannot fail to exist in Russia. It would be logical for it to be the source of systemic sabotage and the slowdown of all those processes that must be conducted at a completely different speed to effectively defend and strengthen our sovereignty. And these agents can be found anywhere, including in circles and departments where we least expect them.”

Dugan is right—these networks exist in Russia today. The point of vulnerability which is exploited most effectively by the West is the greed that comes with the unfulfilled desires of those who have bought into the notion of the West serving as the source of Russia’s economic wellbeing.

The sanctions against Russia were specifically crafted to isolate Russia from the West and, in doing so, create the impression that Russia’s economic woes could be resolved simply by creating the conditions under which these sanctions could be lifted.

But at what cost?

The West does not seek to live side by side with a rejuvenated Russia. Europe has made it clear that a Russia that stands on its own two feet is deemed a threat, and must be brought down.

The West wants Russia to be brought to its knees, to crawl toward its master, begging for relief.

This is not the Russia I experienced in my past travels.

This is not the Russia I fell in love with.

And this is not a Russia I would want to be friends with.

And so Russia should seek to activate the “sanctions shield”, to do everything possible to encourage the economic isolation from the West, to weaken the leverage those in Russia who would sell their magnificent civilization for a handful of silver will never get the chance.

Sergei Karaganov is right—Russia’s future lies to the East, its ruination to the West.

It is to the East and the collective South that Russia must now turn for its economic future.

Make sanctions moot by making it impossible for sanctions to be lifted.

Stop the Dmitriev-Witkoff experiment in its tracks.

One day—maybe soon, probably not—the conditions will exist where Russia can once again do business with the West.

But first the European Union must be broken up.

NATO disbanded.

And the United States compelled through the reality of its own limitations to accept Russia on terms wholly acceptable to Russia, for the benefit of Russia, and not the other way around.

Never forget—Russia has never sought the strategic defeat of the United States.

The United States today is actively seeking the strategic defeat of Russia.

Sanctions are the chosen vector for this policy to reach fruition.

Therefore Russia has no choice, if it desires to avoid being caught up in the regime change policy construct of the United States, than to do everything possible to keep the sanctions imposed against it by the collective West in place in order to shield itself from the destructive forces of corruption and greed that are an inherent part of any “economic engagement” with the West—especially with the United States under the rule of the most transactionally-minded President in US history, Donald Trump.

By Ben Aris, Intellinews, 1/4/25

President Vladimir Putin continues to enjoy strong approval ratings nearly four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to polling from the Levada Centre, an independent [western backed] Russian research organisation.

Despite economic pressure, mounting casualties, and a protracted war effort, public support for the Russian president remains consistently high, highlighting the durability of the Kremlin’s control over the domestic narrative.

Putin’s approval surged in March 2022—just weeks after Russian troops crossed into Ukraine—from 71% in February to 83%, and has since remained above 80% for most of the conflict.

As of December 2025, 85% of respondents said they approved of the president’s performance, while just 13% disapproved. The data shows only minor fluctuations over 36 months, indicating stable support throughout what the Kremlin continues to call its “special military operation.”

The Russian government, while less popular than Putin himself, has also maintained majority approval ratings. Support for the federal government rose from 53% in early 2022 to a high of 76% in mid-2025, before easing slightly to 70% in December.

Disapproval of the government fell from 44% in early 2022 to just over 20% in late 2025 as the war in Ukraine has had little impact on daily lives inside Russia other than pushing prices up. The figures suggest that a significant portion of the Russian population continues to back the state’s actions and overall direction despite the sustained conflict. [Would this be the case if the number of Russian casualties were as ridiculously high as the west claims? – Natylie]

Similarly, the share of Russians who believe the country is heading “in the right direction” has also climbed since the start of the war. In January 2022, only 50% of respondents said Russia was on the right path, with 39% saying it was not. That number jumped to 69% in March 2022 in tacit approval of the Ukrainian invasion, and peaked at 75% in early 2024. As of December 2025, 67% still say the country is moving in the right direction.

Levada Centre sociologist Denis Volkov attributed the early rally-around-the-flag effect to “a consolidation of society in the face of external pressure.” He told The Moscow Times in 2023 that “Putin’s ratings reflect more than just support for the war — they reflect an emotional rejection of what is seen as Western interference.”

While polling in authoritarian states is subject to pressure and self-censorship, the Levada Centre is widely regarded as one of the few credible independent pollsters operating in Russia. “The numbers are real in terms of expressed sentiment, but the environment in which they are collected matters,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre.

Analysts also point to a lack of visible hardship in large Russian cities as a reason for sustained public support. Although sanctions have crippled key sectors, state spending has helped shield much of the population from economic pain. “The war is largely invisible to the public,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of political consultancy R.Politik. “That insulates the Kremlin from accountability.”

By Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 1/1/26

Berletic in his latest article and podcast (Berletic) argues that the US bid for supremacy is accelerating; there is no “retreat” to the Western hemisphere; there is no process of “adaptation” to multipolarism. To the contrary, the US has launched a war against multipolarism. The US continues its proxy war against Russia (I think we should consider it a CIA-led war), persists in its encirclement of China, and, in the Middle East, once again threatens Iran (now enfeebled by domestic dissension and protests as well as by existential problems of drought and pollution).

The US obsession with Greenland, he argues, is far from being a signal of a US wish to retreat to the Western hemisphere (as if that excused such a blatant violation of international law in any case, any more than the ongoing US menacing of Venezuela). The US acquiring or exerting control over Greenland is in fact the US moving closer to Western Russia, where most of Russia’s big centers of population are, including Moscow, threatening Russia to a greater degree, even, than it already does. Alaska is close to Russia but it only close to eastern Russia.

US commanders are currently running the war in Ukraine from Germany; the logistical support for Ukraine is coming from other US proxies Poland and Romania. Greenland will offer an alternative location for rear command of the war as it is undertaken by US’ European proxies, giving the appearance of an “abandonment” of Ukraine by the US, while in fact it prepares a global blockade of Russian, Chinese and Iranian maritime shipping.

As Ukraine collapses, the US will push other US proxies in Europe to come forward to fill the gap left by Ukraine’s collapse of fighting capability, Seizure of Greenland would assist the evolving maritime blockade and in continuing the war against Russia in Ukraine. US military bases in Greenland would be closer to Russia than military bases in Europe, including Turkiye and Great Britain. In February 2025, US Secretary of State for War, Pete Hegseth, told Europe to double down on support of Ukraine, investing in its arms industry capability, increasing military expenditure on NATO from 2% to 5% of GDP, and establishing a division of labor between the US and Europe, with Europe taking responsibility for Ukraine while the US focuses on China.

In Europe the US will position itself in the rear, in Greenland, from which it can supervise the activity of its European proxies in their struggle against Russia and supply the necessary reconnaissance and intelligence. The idea is to pin Russia down and depleted. US proxies will pay the full costs of the conflict with Russia while the US reaps the full benefits. The fall of Syria is an example. Proxies fought the war, the US benefits geopolitically from its collapse.

From 1992, US foreign policy (the Wolfowitz doctine, later refined as the Bush doctrine in 2003) has been driven by the ambition to suppress all actual and potential rivals to US supremacy, everywhere. Even though the latest US strategy paper says that the US policy of supremacy was wrong, it spends most of the time talking about what it must do to stop emergent rivals to US power, even regionally. Nothing in the US will change this; the only source of change can come from without. Such a challenge is most likely to come from China.

A 2018 US naval War College review paper advocated a maritime oil blockade against China and sought to identify ways in which limitations on the possibility of such a blockade could be circumvented. It talked not about blockading ports but about blockading choke-points well beyond the range of most of China’s weapons: e.g. the Malacca Strait (between Malaysia’s Malay Peninsula and Indonesia’s Sumatra, connecting the Indian Ocean – via the Andaman Sea – to the South China Sea) which forms a vital, heavily trafficked global shipping route for energy, goods, and components, rich in history, commerce, and strategic importance, with Singapore located at its southern gateway.

The US marine force has an anti-shipping division that can relocate to such sensitive chokepoint areas to interdict Chinese shipping or other shipping headed for, or from, China. US strategies anticipate how China might evade US actions in relation to such choke points and seek to blunt their efficacy. Destruction of the Myanmar oil pipeline is envisaged as a way to interrupt the flow of energy to China, given China’s limited capacity to control what happens within Myanmar. Since the 2018 paper, US-backed militants have already begun to physically attack the Myanmar pipeline. There are areas along the pipeline that the Myanmar government has had to abandon. If any part of the pipeline is compromised, the whole project is useless.

Here and elsewhere, the US seeking to sabotage China’s Belt and Road initiative. The US is manipulating Cambodia to destabilize pro-Chinese initiatives in Thailand. In Pakistan there is another transport and trading corridor in which China has been investing heavily but where the US backs local militant attackjs, while the US also tries to destabilize the Pakistani regime. The same is true of Balochistan, where Pakistan had allowed China a development area and which the US is now tyring, through proxy rebels, to dismantle. So far as China’s long shared border with Russia, across which China it imports Russian energy is concerned, US aggression against Russia over Ukraine targets Russian energy facilities that in turn affects Russian capacity to supply energy to China if continued for long enough. New York Times articles on the secret war against Russia over Ukraine notes how the CIA has supported drone attacks on Russian shipping and energy facilities in Sebastopol, the Black Sea, and Russian energy facilities in the Caspian, Mediterranean and off the coast of Africa. This reduces Russian ability to come to China’s assistance in the event that the US launches a maritime blockade of China.

US interventions against the flows of oil to China from Iran and from Venezuela, and Marco Rubio’s assertion in January 2025 that US control of Greenland would enable it to control energy flows enhanced by growing navigability of shipping lanes through the Arctic – similar to US attempts to interfere with shipping lanes in the South China Sea – are all indications of an evolving US policy of containment by blockade. All are examples of US pressure on choke-points in the flow of energy and trade to and from China that otherwise might reduce the efficacy of a US maritime blockade of China.