By Sylvia Demarest, Substack, 6/4/25

Sylvia Demarest is a retired trial lawyer.

Recent events crystalize the growing risk of a global war, World War 3 (WW3). Some believe WW3 has already started, and point to the many smaller skirmishes that preceded formal declarations of war in World War’s 1 and 2. If so, WW3 has been going on for a very long time, perhaps back to the first Gulf War in 1990-91 that ended the “Vietnam Syndrome,” or to the NATO bombing of Serbia (then part of Yugoslavia) in 1999) reflecting US intention to contain Russia. The previous world wars were horribly destructive, but weapons technology has become even more dangerous since WW2. Given the destructive power of modern weapons, the thought of fighting a global war is clinically insane; the risk to civilization is much too great, yet current western leadership is actively discussing just such a war.

World War 2 and the adoption of military Keynesianism is credited with ending the Great Depression and providing the economic stimulus for several decades of economic growth after WW2. Militarism and military Keynesianism is a powerful economic and political force in the US. The policy of militarism and war is supported by both political parties and has persisted, election after election, for decades– yes, it’s always the same boss!

This essay will also explore a few examples of past US militarism and military Keynesianism; the next essay will look at how human biases, censorship, and propaganda contribute to this endless cycle of war.

Military Keynesianism

Before World War 2 the United States always demilitarized at the end of every war, including World War 1. The issues surrounding the return and demobilization of 2 million troops from Europe after World War 1 created huge issues, including economic dislocations. Many veterans faced issues with unemployment and readjusting to economic life. The difficulties faced in adjusting from a wartime to a peacetime economy “would have lasting implications for U.S. military policy and society in the decades ahead.”

The first public reference to “military Keynesianism” was on January 5, 1938, in a column in the New Republic by John T. Flynn. Flynn was convinced that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was plotting to involve the US in a foreign war to stimulate the US economy. Flynn, a well-known progressive journalist at the time, observed that in 1937 a new downturn in the US economy had sent unemployment soaring to the same level as the beginning of the Great Depression. Flynn stated that a top Roosevelt advisor had advocated a large dose of military spending i.e. “military Keynesianism”, and a major foreign war as the way to cure the nation’s economic problems.

The Great Depression had witnessed the collapse of the money supply when thousands of banks failed, companies closed, unemployment soared, and prices fell. When WW2 ended, the return of deflation was feared when the nation demobilized. There were over 12 million Americans in the armed services and many of these men wanted “to be home by Christmas”. The issue was resolved by a combination of social legislation to support and ease the transition to civilian life along with a commitment to continued militarism.

World War 2 finally ended the Great Depression. Economic relief began as orders from Europe and Asia provided an economic lift. After the US entered the war, military spending exploded, rising 600 percent from June 1940 to 1941, reaching 42 percent of GDP by 1943–44. Even though fifteen million workers entered the military, the economy expanded at its highest rate ever: real GDP jumped 54 percent from 1939 to 1944, and unemployment reached a historical low of 1.2 percent.

The US continued to benefit economically after the war ended. WW2 had devastated the economies and productive capacity of Europe and Japan, leaving US productive capacity unscathed. After years of economic rationing, Americans were ready to spend their money and US factories shifted from war to peacetime production providing employment to returning veterans. The US experienced several decades of exceptional economic growth, along with huge gains in employment and wages. War and military Keynesianism had been characterized by both “guns and butter,” along with at least twenty major technological innovations the war produced that were quickly applied to civilian life. Rather than being a “burden,” the establishment of military Keynesianism in this unique historical context—witnessed a large military budget that produced capital formation, employment, and technological dynamism. This is why many politicians today still see war as a “fix” for economic problems. In a world encumbered by slow economic growth and high debt levels the idea that war is a solution to political and economic problems is adding to the impetus for a new global war.

The huge economic surge that followed the end of WW2 permanently changed the US. The US became a consumer society as ordinary people were molded into consumers with an unquenchable thirst for more stuff. This was the perfect environment for the neoliberal ideology, discussed in previous essays, to become dominant, and to consume politics and economics.

Military Keynesianism has been used as an economic stimulus and a jobs program ever since. The production of weapons and equipment is one of the largest remaining manufacturing industries in the US. Congress has been careful to locate bases and production facilities in each district, spreading the funding and the jobs around the country. US militarism is an economic stimulus program, a jobs program, and a source of lobbying and campaign cash. This means that militarism, and the wars that support it, has enormous economic and political power in the USA, even though maintaining it requires perpetual war.

For military Keynesianism to work its economic and political magic, the United States needs to use up the military equipment it produces so the arms manufacturers can keep busy. This is why the US is the world’s largest seller of weapons, and why every US president is an arms dealer. Even with these arms sales, military Keynesianism requires the US to fight a war every two, or three years, or to be continuously at war.

A few examples of militarism in action

1–The Korean War–1950-53–The Korean war began in June of 1950 and lasted until July of 1953. It was fought between North Korea, supported by China and the Soviet Union, and South Korea backed by UN forces and the United States. On June 25^th 75,000 North Korean soldiers crossed the 38^th parallel. The country had been divided at that level in August of 1945 by two young aides at the US State Department. Rather than seeing this as a war between two unstable dictatorships, Syngman Rhee (south) and Kim Il Sung (north), the US feared it was a first step in a Communist campaign to take over the world. The fighting went back and forth, with a huge loss of life, until a stalemate was reached and the fighting was ended at the same place with the addition of a demilitarized zone.

What most Americans do not know is that the US bombed and napalmed cities and towns all across North Korea. US bombers faced little opposition as North Korea lacked air defenses. During the campaign, conventional weapons such as explosives, incendiary bombs, and napalm destroyed nearly all of the country’s cities and towns, including an estimated 85% of its buildings. The U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,557 tons of napalm, during the war on both North and South Korea. In May 1951, an international fact finding team from East Germany, West Germany, China, and the Netherlands stated, “The members, in the whole course of their journey, did not see one town that had not been destroyed, and there were very few undamaged villages. It is estimated that 20% of the population of North Korea perished. The American people may not have realized it, but major war crimes were committed by the US air force in North Korea. The North Korean people have not forgotten. The Kim family is still in power and have used these war crimes to remain in power.

2–The Vietnam War–1954-1975– This war represents perhaps an even greater tragedy than does the Korean War because it impacted not only Vietnam but all the surrounding countries. It began with an independence movement against the French and ended with the defeat of the US military. This war also impacted the US through the creation of a large anti-war movement that objected to the draft and the brutality of this war, adding to the pressure to end the war. There are dozens of books written about this war so this comment will be brief. The Vietnamese were fighting for independence and sovereignty, but their struggle got caught up in the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union.

The human costs of the long conflict were harsh for all involved. Not until 1995 did Vietnam release its official estimate of war dead: as many as 2 million civilians on both sides and some 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war. In 1982 the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., inscribed with the names of 57,939 members of U.S. armed forces who had died or were missing as a result of the war. Over the following years, additions to the list have brought the total past 58,200. (At least 100 names on the memorial are those of servicemen who were Canadian citizens.) Among other countries that fought for South Vietnam on a smaller scale, South Korea suffered more than 4,000 dead, Thailand about 350, Australia more than 500, and New Zealand some three dozen.

The public reaction to the war resulted in the Vietnam Syndrome. The Vietnam Syndrome is a term used to describe the growing public aversion to US military involvement abroad that arose from controversies that surrounded the Vietnam war. It reflected the public’s reaction to the negative experiences and outcome of the war and reflected public opposition to US involvement in military actions without clear objectives.

3–The Church Committee 1975–The Church Committee was a committee of the US Senate established in 1975 to investigate abuses by the intelligence agencies such as the CIA, FBI, and NSA. The committee uncovered serious misconduct including illegal surveillance of American citizens and plots abroad involving regime change operations, coups, and assassinations. The Committee’s publications can be found here. In total, the Committee published 14 reports in 1975 and 1976 that contain a wealth of information on abuses by US intelligence agencies. This included U.S. involvement in attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, particularly Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, the Diem brothers of Vietnam, and General Rene Schneider of Chile. It also contains findings on the development of a general “Executive Action” capability by the CIA i.e. an in house assassination team.

The Committees findings came from the acquisition of what was called “the family jewels”. The reports that constitute the CIA’s “Family Jewels” were commissioned in 1973 by then CIA director James R. Schlesinger in response to press accounts of CIA involvement in the Watergate scandal—in particular, support to the burglars, E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, both CIA veterans. On May 7, 1973, Schlesinger signed a directive commanding senior officers to compile a report of current or past CIA actions that may have fallen outside the agency’s charter. The resulting report, which was in the form of a 693-page loose-leaf book of memos, was passed on to William Colby when he succeeded Schlesinger as Director of Central Intelligence in late 1973. That binder was acquired by the Church Committee. Most of the documents were released on June 25, 2007, after more than three decades of secrecy.

The First Gulf War 1990-1991 ends the Vietnam Syndrome

The Vietnam Syndrome lasted, with a few small exceptions, until the first Gulf war. This war was fought to eject Iraq from Kuwait. It was also conducted in a way to end the public’s reluctance to support foreign wars i.e. the “Vietnam Syndrome.” This was accomplished by turning the war into a TV spectacle with video game type videos showing US precision laser guided weapons going into chimneys to blow up buildings. A huge invasion force was organized by the US, Iraq was ejected, and militarism and foreign wars were suddenly back in vogue.

The war ended on the highway of death, when the retreating Iraqi forces were attacked and destroyed.

But it took 911 and the announcement of the “war on terror” to regenerate the current cycle of war and the endless series of ongoing wars in the Middle East and East Asia. These wars include the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the overthrow of Qaddafi in Libya, the successful covert war against Bashir al Assad in Syria, the drone war in many countries, the constant bombing of Yemen, the ongoing US support for the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the threats of war against Iran, and the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. US militarism is as active as ever.

Conclusion

Whether the blame falls on military Keynesianism, the Cold War, or the push for global hegemony, the US has been constantly at war since the end of WW2. Even though these wars were fought against countries that lacked modern military capacity, including reconnaissance, and air defenses, the US still did not “win” any of these wars, including the wars fought during the “War on Terror.”

The US is no longer the sole military power globally–both Russia and China should be seen as peer competitors. Today, the US is involved in a proxy war with Russia and threatens a “pivot to Asia” to confront China. Both Russia and China have military capabilities that are at least equivalent to the US. Even Iran has highly capable air and missile defenses.

Modern war requires the industrial capacity to rapidly produce the needed weapons, along with the ability to supply armies fighting thousands of miles away. The US no longer has the capacity to fight a long foreign war. Moreover, both Russia and China can bring the war to the US homeland. Yet these factors are ignored, and US militarism persists. One reason? The US is economically dependent on militarism.

The US military budget is set to grow by $150 billion to over $1 trillion under the Trump budget proposal. The US is preparing for more war.

The next essay will discuss the human biases along with the use of censorship and propaganda to create support for these wars.

By Big Serge, Substack, 6/17/25

“It is impossible to hold an olive branch in one hand and fire a pistol with the other.”

So quipped Wilhelm Solf, a diplomat with the Imperial German Foreign Ministry. As Europe groped its way through the mass casualties and civilizational exhaustion of the First World War, Solf was one of the few key personnel in the German government to advocate for a negotiated peace in early 1917, as the war crossed its halfway mark. Of course, we know that World War One did not end in 1917 – attempts to negotiate a settlement collapsed almost instantly, with the allies rejecting German proposals outright. Strangely, one of the main points of discontent did not even relate to war aims or the particular terms of peace, but rather to the issue of blame. Both the Central Powers and the Allied Entente were adamant that the other side ought to formally accept the blame for the war, and talks never really progressed farther than that.

The abortive peace process was further muddled by the intervention of US President Woodrow Wilson. Riding the confidence won by his victory in the 1916 election, Wilson felt that he had political freedom of action to intervene more actively in Europe, and the United States – perhaps alone among all the powers of the world – seemed to have levers of influence over both parties in the conflict. Wilson’s agenda, as such, was to negotiate a “peace without victory”, with neither side annihilating the other, in the spirit of comity and mutual respect. A harsh victory’s peace, according to Wilson, would be felt as a humiliation by the defeated party, and breed the conditions for future war by seeding intractable resentment and revanchism.

Knowing what we know about the Treaty of Versailles, which was just this sort of deeply resented punitive peace, Wilson’s comments seem prescient. Unfortunately, the idealistic (some would say naïve) American President had failed to read the room. His Peace Without Victory speech was well received by the domestic American audience, but rejected as anathema by virtually everyone else, including not only the Germans but also the Anglo-French Entente.

Wilson, aloof across the ocean, failed to understand two very important things. First, that Europe’s blood was up after years of carnage. This was particularly the case after Germany’s botched attempt to extend peace feelers to the allies; the Entente was outraged at what they saw as insulting German terms, while the Germans in turn were in a defiant mood after the Entente’s abrupt rejection of those same terms. Secondly, Wilson failed to grasp that he was not viewed as an impartial mediator, particularly by the Germans. While he may have viewed himself as a statesman with a gifted touch, uniquely positioned to halt the bloodshed, Berlin fundamentally did not trust him or the allies, and preferred instead to ruthlessly exploit all its kinetic powers. Peace Without Victory may sound charitable and cozy, but victory was much more appealing. After millions of casualties, all parties preferred to go for the win rather than limping away with a draw.

At the risk of forcing the analogy too bluntly, we find ourselves with a very similar situation in Ukraine. President Trump, like Wilson, came off the high of his election victory fully determined to insinuate himself into the war as a peacemaker. His commitment to ending the war, like Wilson’s speech of January 22, 1917, played very well with his domestic audience, but resonated little across the Atlantic. Like the Germans a century ago, Russia does not see the American President as an honest broker, and he has discovered that his leverage is not so great as he thought. More importantly, it is as true now as it was in 1917 that it is damnably difficult to convince warring states to stand down when their blood is up, and to walk away from the sunk cost of so much bloodshed. The motif of blame has even made its return, with many European parties writing off the idea of concessions to Russia simply on the basis that Moscow is the guilty party in this war.

We have a First World War problem, and it will resolve itself with a First World War solution, when one warring party succeeds in exhausting and breaking the other. As Ukrainian and Russian negotiating teams met in Istanbul for their brief token negotiations, which were predictably non-productive, the two parties continued to exchange strikes in the usual ratios, and the Russian Army ground forward along the line of contact. Wilhelm Solf’s olive branch was never seriously in play, but the pistol remains operational. Blood is up in Ukraine, and it will continue to soak the ground.

The Collapse of Diplomacy (Again)

The recent Istanbul “peace talks” between Ukraine and Russia began and ended in the blink of an eye, making it obvious (as if it were not already) that nothing productive could come from the discussion. The second round of talks, which took place on June 2nd, lasted for about an hour, which is scarcely enough time for diplomatic niceties. Predictably, nothing was agreed upon except for a tentative deal to exchange POWs and a KIA remains swap, which has already begun to come off the rails.

The problem with diplomacy right now is that there is little appetite to actually negotiate a deal, but all three major parties (Ukraine, Russia, and the United States) are willing to engage in performative diplomacy with objectives that are orthogonal to each other. It is unlikely that any of the negotiating teams actually arrived in Istanbul with an expectation or intention of ending the war, but they did have genuine objectives that they were trying to achieve. The issue is further obfuscated by the ancillary issue of the mineral rights deal between Ukraine and the United States, which is not directly related to the prospects for a negotiated peace, but is nonetheless an aspect of President Trump’s performative negotiating.

For Russia, the purpose of performative diplomacy is to publicly reiterate its war aims and assert confidence in its battlefield dominance. It is critical to remember that at every stage of this war, when given the opportunity, Moscow has restated the same fundamental terms, which constitute the Russian “bottom line”: these include the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the four annexed oblasts, recognition of Russian annexations, limits on the size and armaments of the Ukrainian armed forces, a ban on Ukrainian membership in military alliances, including NATO, Russian protection as an official language of Ukraine, and the lifting of international sanctions on Russia.

This amounts, in concrete terms, to Ukrainian surrender. Moscow has been hesitant to use language like this, and has certainly avoided bombastic World War style language like “unconditional surrender”, nevertheless this is what these terms represent. This is particularly the case when it comes to those cities in the annexed oblasts that are still under Ukrainian control – Kherson, Zaporizhia, Slovyansk, and Kramatorsk. Ukrainian possession of these cities remains the most important card in Kiev’s hand, and indeed the only real leverage that they have vis a vis Russia is their ability (for the time being) to force the Russian Army to sustain additional casualties to take these cities. Once Russia has those cities, Ukraine has nothing to offer in negotiations. Russian reiteration of these war aims, then, amounts to a demand that Ukraine hand over its most important negotiating assets, which is equivalent to surrender.

We should therefore understand Russia’s actions in Istanbul as an ostentatious display of force, making a thinly veiled demand for Ukrainian surrender in an act of performative diplomacy. This performance is directed squarely at Kiev and Washington.

Ukraine, however, is engaged in its own form of performative diplomacy, but the Russians are not Kiev’s intended audience. Rather, Ukraine “negotiates” as a form of signaling towards Washington (and to a lesser extent Europe). This is seen in the fact that, while Russia is demanding de facto Ukrainian surrender, Kiev is asking for stopgap measures like limited ceasefires. The goal, for Ukraine, is not to end the war, but to paint the Russians as the intransigent party, unwilling to even agree on a temporary ceasefire. As the Ukrainians see it, this creates a win-win scenario: if Russia does agree to a ceasefire, this blunts Russian momentum on the battlefield and provides an opportunity for the AFU to recalibrate; if Russia does not agree, this can be presented to the west as proof of Russian bloodthirstiness.

The result, then is, that Moscow and Kiev are approaching the question of negotiations with incompatible paradigms. Kiev, ideally, would like a ceasefire without any negotiated obligations; Moscow wants negotiations without a ceasefire. Russia has demonstrated that it is perfectly comfortable negotiating while military operations are ongoing. If the discussion collapses, it can always be resumed later, and in any case the Russian Army can continue advancing. This flexibility comes from Russian confidence that it will achieve the same strategic objectives in either case. For Ukraine, on the other hand, negotiating against a backdrop of ongoing combat is bad math, because it is the AFU that is steadily being rolled back and seeing its strategic position weaken.

Taking this to its paradigmatic conclusion, Russia and Ukraine have fundamentally different views of the relationship between military operations and negotiation. Ukraine seeks to negotiate to improve its military position: using performative diplomacy to leverage additional support from its western backers, and seeking a ceasefire to reconstitute its forces. Russia, on the other hand, uses military operations to improve its position in negotiations. The particular war aims and demands of the two parties are almost inconsequential, as the two sides do not even agree on what negotiations are for.

Meanwhile, the United States is engaged in its own equally performative form of diplomacy, which is aimed at giving Trump strategic flexibility in Ukraine. By arranging negotiations between Russia and Ukraine (and delivering Moscow his own labyrinthian peace plan), Trump can argue that he made a good faith effort to end the conflict. If it works, and a negotiated peace can be reached, he will be hailed as a great peacemaker. If it does not work, he is well positioned to wash his hands of Ukraine by passing Kiev off to the Europeans. We already see the signs of this, with Washington threatening to walk away from the peace process, preparing to wind down military assistance to Kiev, and Trump adopting increasingly apathetic language towards Ukraine.

Trump is no doubt eager to avoid turning Ukraine into his own Afghanistan, and he has the benefit of a junior partner (Europe) which is perfectly willing, if not fully able, to hold the bag for him. All in all, Trump has managed Ukraine fairly well, if one understands that his chief objective has been to gain political flexibility, rather than ending the war at all costs or achieving some sort of Ukrainian victory. Simply by getting Ukrainian and Russian negotiators into the same room (no matter how performative the proceedings), he’s gained the leeway to tell the American public that he gave it his best shot; when the negotiations collapse, he can begin washing his hands of Ukraine and hand the flaming bag to the Europeans.

With the rapid and predictably unfruitful talks in Istanbul now over, it looks like we are finally ready to move past the charade – particularly given the latest news that the US is cancelling unrelated bilateral discussions with Moscow. The thing that stands out the most from all of this, of course, is that virtually nothing has changed in the relative negotiatory stances. Notwithstanding Vice President Vance’s assertion that Russia is “asking too much”, Moscow is making exactly the same demands that it has been making for years, and it is running into the same brick wall.

Neither Trump’s election, nor the failure of Ukraine’s offensives on the Zaporizhian steppe and Kursk, nor the ongoing Russian progress clearing the Donbas has had any material effect on the negotiating calculus. These things all mattered in their own right, but curiously none of them have moved the needle on diplomatic prospects in Ukraine. The negotiations are a strangely static, sterile, performative enterprise, serving mainly as forums to allow Ukraine and Russia to publicly reiterate their aims and complaints. In that respect, they are mostly harmless. Meanwhile, the war will be fought to its conclusion.

Ukraine’s Blockbuster: The Strike War in Context

By far the biggest headliner moment of the year, at least in western media, was Ukraine’s unexpected attack on Russian strategic aviation assets at dispersed airbases deep within Russia itself. The attack, codenamed Operation Spider’s Web, was certainly notable for three distinct reasons. First, it degraded Russia’s strategic aviation (strategic bombers and Airborne Early Warning and Control), which are assets that had been essentially unscathed to this point. Secondly, the strike affected Russian bases as far afield as the Russian Far East, which damages the sense of Russian geographic standoff and the inviolability of the country’s vast dimensions. Third and finally, the platform for the attack was highly novel, with the Ukrainians launching small drones from truck-carried launchers which were assembled within Russia itself, at a covert Ukrainian base in Chelyabinsk.

One item which is interesting to note off the top is that, although the use of such a truck-mounted launching system is new, the idea itself is not, and in fact originated with the Russians themselves. More than a decade ago, Russia began playing with a system, affectionately dubbed “Club K”, which purported to fire cruise missiles from a launch platform which appeared in all respects to be an innocuous shipping container. Originally marketed as an anti-ship weapon, Club K drew scathing reviews as an exercise in perfidy, and China’s ongoing work on the theme has received similar criticism.

This, of course, makes it rather funny that Ukraine has received such widespread acclaim and unqualified praise for Operation Spider’s Web. The complaints levied against Russian and Chinese experiments with Club K type systems are essentially that it is unlawful to disguise strike systems as innocuous civilian cargo. Clearly, the Ukrainian strike is not particularly different, and merely swaps a shipborne cargo container for a truck. Now, those who have been reading my work for some time know that I am not the type to wring my hands about “international law”, which I view as an essentially nonsensical concept. International Law is not really law, but only an institutionalized mechanism for the strong to constrain the weak. Nor, for that matter, does hypocrisy really matter. What matters, and particularly in war time, is not what a state is “allowed” to do by international law, but what it is able to do, and what sort of risk appetite it has. In the case of Club K and the Spider’s Web, we see that their perfidy is our audacious covert operation. The hypocrisy does not really matter, but it is at least a little funny.

So, on to the damage from Spider’s Web itself. Initially, much of the Ukrainian infosphere was bandying numbers that were patently absurd, claiming that something like 70% of Russia’s strategic bombing fleet had been destroyed. The official claim from the Ukrainian government was that 40 bombers and early warning aircraft had been badly damaged or destroyed, which would amount to perhaps a third of the Russian inventory. A review of the video published by Ukraine, as well as satellite imagery, confirms around a dozen total losses, and western defense officials have landed on the number 20, including six destroyed TU-95s and four TU-22s.

Putting this in context, it means that Russia lost approximately 12% of its TU-95 fleet and 7% of its TU-22s, with the inventory of TU-160’s escaping unscathed. All told, that is approximately 8.5% of Russia’s strategic bombers. The issue, which constantly emerges on the Ukrainian side, are absurdly high expectations and a gross misunderstanding of what “success” means. In any realistic paradigm, destroying nearly 10% of Russian strategic bombing assets with relatively cheap drones would be viewed as a considerable success, but the ongoing expectation that Russian capabilities can simply be wiped out prevents such a realistic assessment.

We should acknowledge that the upsides here for Ukraine, lest we fall into the trap of “coping.” It’s manifestly obvious that Spider’s Web was both a schematically ingenious and technically innovative operation on the part of Ukraine. Striking at five widely separated Russian airbases with assets staged deep in the Russian heartland, Spider’s Web was both bold and ambitious, and it did not require risking particularly valuable Ukrainian assets. From a risk-reward calculation, this was clearly a success for Ukraine.

Furthermore, it must be plainly admitted that the destroyed Russian aircraft are, in fact, mostly irreplaceable. The TU-95 has been out of production for years, and the extant fleet was expected to serve a workhorse role for the foreseeable future. Russia has some production of the TU-160, with perhaps four aircraft scheduled for delivery in the near term, but this will obviously not fully replace the recent losses. Still, things could have been much worse. Losses were minimized by the total failure of strikes on two of the five target airfields. At Dyagilevo airfield near Ryazan, Russian air defenses were effective and no aircraft were hit; meanwhile, the attack on Ukrainka airfield in Amur Oblast failed when the launch container blew up. It also appears that the strike on Ivanovo Severny hit a pair of A-50 (AEWAC) aircraft but did destroy them.

We’re left with something of a mixed bag. Ukraine demonstrated a novel and ambitious ability to strike Russian assets and did destroy several irreplaceable aircraft, but the results were certainly far short of what Kiev was hoping for. The Russians have good reason to feel that they escaped the worst of it. Certainly, this will be an inducement to accelerate the construction of hardened aircraft shelters, which has been underway at a plodding pace, though obviously not at all airfields, since 2023. Thus far, the Russians have mainly prioritized hardening airfields in range of conventional Ukrainian strike systems (in places like Kursk and Crimea). Spider’s Web will likely prompt similar hardening at far flung airfields that were once thought to be relatively safe.

Add it all up, and the ledger on Spider’s Web is fairly straightforward: it was a significant success for Ukraine, in that it destroyed a good number of valuable Russian assets while risking very little. However, multiple Russian airfields escaped without losing aircraft, thanks to a mix of successful Russian air defense and Ukrainian malfunction. The Ukrainians are left with a success, but one that was much smaller than they might have hoped for.

More significantly, however, Spider’s Web degrades Russian capabilities in a way that is very unlikely to make a material impact for Ukraine itself. Losing strategic bombers, especially models that are out of production, puts more stress on the remaining airframes and pinches capacity, but these losses are highly unlikely to make anything except the most marginal reductions in Russian strikes against Ukraine.

The first and most basic reason for this, of course, is that the air-launched missiles of the strategic bombing fleet form a relatively small fraction of the munitions that Russia fires into Ukraine. The vast majority have been, and continue to be, drones (like the venerable Geran) and the ground launched Iskander. Gerans, in particular, form the most numerous munition now in use, with hundreds launched per day amid rapidly increasing production. TU-95 participation in airstrikes is a relatively scarce occasion, and no matter how loud and cinematic the Big Bears may be, they are not remotely the primary launch platform in this war.

In fact, Spider’s Web provides an opportunity to pontificate on an ancillary point of considerable importance. Russia’s use of air launched cruise missiles has slackened significantly in 2025, as they stockpile missiles not only for use in Ukraine but also for other contingencies. In fact, mere days before Spider’s Web struck at the strategic bombing force, Ukrainian media was wondering aloud about the relatively scarce Russian use of these systems, noting that air launches by strategic bombers had occurred only a handful of times this year. At the moment, the key factor constraining Russian cruise missile strikes on Ukraine is neither a shortage of missiles nor a lack of airframes, but strategic decisions to stockpile assets.

In the grand scheme of things, the loss of irreplaceable bombers does compress top-line Russian capabilities, but not in a way that changes the calculus for Ukraine right now. Destroying a grouping of TU-95s on the ground is a success for Ukraine, particularly given the cheap assets that they expended for the task, but it does not address the problem, which is that Russia has established the ability to sustainably bombard Ukraine, particularly with Iskanders and Gerans, all while stockpiling strike assets. It is possible that, in the wake of Spider’s Web, Russia is compelled to make more frequent use of the TU-160 (which has been used extremely sparingly to this point), but it is clear that Russia has many strike options and its capabilities vis a vis Ukraine remain more than adequate. This is a war of industrial attrition, and Ukraine’s covert operations are not a substitute for the capacity to wage a persistent air campaign.

Ultimately, this brings us to the broader point. Spider’s Web was an innovative example of an asymmetric operation, but this merely speaks to the presence of a broader asymmetry in this war, as such. Russia is the far richer and more powerful fighter in this conflict, which paradoxically means that it has more assets both to use and to lose. Ukraine managed to destroy nearly a dozen Russian strategic bombers, but Ukraine has no strategic bombers at all. Russia will always be vulnerable to asymmetric losses of this sort, because it possesses assets that Ukraine does not. Losing strategic bombers is not good, but it’s better than not having them at all. In this conflict, there’s still only one party that has a vast and diverse arsenal of indigenously produced strike systems, and one party that has to resort to (admittedly very clever) truck launched drone attacks due to the exhaustion of its conventional strike capabilities.

Hitting the Seam: Donbas Front Update

On the ground, the primary axis of effort for the Russian Army continues to be the central Donbas front, around the cities of Kostyantynivka and Pokrovsk. This is particularly the case now that the two axes in South Donetsk and Kursk have been largely scratched off. A brief look at the situation map reveals a swelling Russian offensive in this critical central sector. The past few years ought to have given us a good sense of caution about using words like “breakthrough” and “collapse”, so I will instead simply argue that the Ukrainian Army is in serious trouble in this sector.

The reasons are fairly straightforward, and lie not only in the escalating manpower shortages facing Ukrainian formations, but also in a triple vulnerability that exists in this particular sector of front. In short, the Pokrovsk-Kostyantynivka axis suffers from what we will call a “triple seam” which makes it operationally very vulnerable, and the current Russian offensive is aimed directly at this seam, or operational joint. Let’s elaborate.

The first seam, or vulnerability, is geographic and thus by far the easiest to understand. The basic issue is that the urban belt in western Donetsk (running from Kostyantynivka up to Slovyansk) lies on the floor of a valley. In the Kostyantynivka sector in particular, there are local high points around Chasiv Yar, Toretsk, and Ocheretyne, all of which are now firmly in Russian hands and form the bases of support for advances towards Kostyantynivka. To the west of Kostyantynivka, there is a wedge-shaped plateau which separates the city from Pokrovsk, and it is into this elevated wedge that the Russians are now advancing.

The operational problem for Ukraine, however, goes much farther than the elevation map. In fact, the elevation issue dovetails with structural problems with Ukraine’s prepared defenses. To understand this, we must first remember the state of the front in 2023. Two summers ago, the main axis of Russian effort was through Bakhmut – that is, an advance due west across central Donetsk. At that point, the southeastern axis of the front (Avdiivka, Krasnogorivka, Ugledar) was holding steady for the AFU. Facing the prospect of a Russian advance directly from the east, the Ukrainians built up defenses around Kostyantynivka which face eastward, towards Bakhmut.

The collapse of the southern front creates a pivot in the Ukrainian defenses, so that the axis of the Russian advance is now from the southwest of Kostyantynivka, rather than from the east. Although the Ukrainians began building new defenses (oriented towards the south) after the collapse of the southern front, there remains a significant gap west of Kostyantynivka. Furthermore, the “joint” where Ukraine’s defenses intersect is essentially at the southwestern limit of Kostyantynivka itself.

Recent Russian advances have now put them behind the Ukrainian positions guarding the southwestern approach to Kostyantynivka. When the Russians reached Yablunivka (approximately June 4), they were firmly in the rear of the defensive belt southwest of Kostyantynivka, opening up the Ukrainian line here for entry into the city’s western flank and link up with the advance out of Toretsk.

Given Ukraine’s lack of manpower, these trench systems threaten to become highways for Russian forces, as we saw along the Ocheretyne axis in 2024. Once Russian forces break into these belts, they are able to roll along the length of the belts deep into Ukrainian space.

In short, a variety of structural weaknesses are all dovetailing in the same sector of front. The Russians are advancing from advantageous high ground into structural seams in the Ukrainian defenses, precisely into the area of front that wedges Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka apart from each other. The result is an emerging double envelopment, with the Russians plowing through the middle towards the rear areas behind these cities. The terrain and the orientation of the Ukrainian lines have accommodated an enormous Russian splitting wedge which will sever the lines of communication to both cities. This would be a major problem under ideal circumstances, but given Ukraine’s inability to properly man its positions, it has become a crisis.

In the coming weeks, Russian forces will continue their expansion into the interstitial space between Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka, probing their way into Ukraine’s operational liver. When they reach the space just to the southwest of Druzhivka, they will be positioned to cut the lines of communication into both cities. Simultaneously, they will continue the rollup of the defenses on Kostyantynivka’s southwestern flank. With Russian forces penetrating into the city’s southwestern flank, the city is already in an untenable position,

Of the two cities, Kostyantynivka is likely to fall first, with the Russians beginning to assault the city proper at some point in July. In what I would characterize simply as a command decision, the Russians have been patient about pushing Myrnograd and crumpling the shoulder of the Pokrovsk position. At this point, they seem unlikely to do so until the advance into the seam has compromised the lines of supply from the rear.

At the risk of being somewhat hyperbolic, this remains the only sector worth watching closely. Russian forces are exerting relatively minimal efforts on other axes of the front. There is incremental progress, pregnant with opportunity, around Lyman, and Kupyansk, and the expansion of the Russian “buffer zone” in Sumy oblast bears watching. It seems extremely unlikely, however, that Russia has intentions in the near term of pushing the front towards the city of Sumy itself; rather, the buffer zone is aimed at seizing a forward defensive line along the high ground on Ukraine’s side of the border, keeping an advantageous front open to dissipate Ukraine resources. The center of gravity in this war remains the central Donbas, and the key operational fact, as such, has been the pivot in the Russian strategic axis. After advancing westward through Bakhmut in 2023, they broke open the south in 2024 and are now advancing orthogonally into the Ukrainian defense between Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka, in the penultimate act of the Donbas campaign before they reach the prize in Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.

Conclusion: Strategic Clarity

I have written frequently about the critical importance of a “theory of victory” when waging a war. This refers, in the simplest sense, to the need for a state to have an overarching concept for leveraging power into its war aims. This is the strategic ligament which connects military operations and diplomacy to the state’s wartime objectives.

As the war moves on into its fourth year, Ukraine and her western backers have cycled through several different theories of victory which were quietly discarded after coming apart at the seams. In the first year of the war, the theory of Ukrainian victory centered on created an unacceptable cost-benefit calculus for Russia. If Ukraine and the west showed unexpected resolve, keeping the AFU fighting fiercely in the field, it was hoped that Russia would back down from fighting a long war, particularly as sanctions gnawed away at the Russian economy. Instead, Russia began mobilizing for a longer fight, and the Russian economy has thus far weathered the sanctions intact.

This theory of victory was then replaced with a model predicated purely on military operations, which supposed that a decisive victory could be won in the south by knifing through Russian defenses in the land bridge. This theory came apart in a much more visible fashion, with western armor burning on the steppe after a botched attempt to breach the Surovikin line. A second attempt to restart decisive operations met a similar end in Kursk.

In the last year or so, the theory of Ukrainian victory pivoted once again, particularly under the auspices of the new Trump administration, in favor of words like “attrition” and “stalemate” as a mechanism to gain a negotiated settlement. If the front in Ukraine can be locked into something approximating a stalemate – that is, if the cost of further advances can be made prohibitively high for Russia – the conditions will be set for a negotiated peace.

In contrast, Russia has had an essentially consistent theory of victory since late 2022, when it began mobilization. That theory is very simple: by establishing a basis for sustainable military operations against Ukraine, consistent pressure and ground advances can be maintained until either Ukrainian resistance collapses or Russia controls the Donbas. To this point, Ukraine has not demonstrated capabilities – either to go on the offensive or to halt the Russian advance in the Donbas – that change this basic calculus.

Commentators in the west rarely try to view the conflict from Russia’s perspective, but if they could they would quickly see why Russian confidence remains high. As Russia sees it, they have absorbed and defeated Ukraine’s two best punches on the ground (the 2023 counteroffensive and the Kursk operation), and they have weathered a long and steady infusion of western combat power without the trajectory of either the ground campaign or the strike war fundamentally shifting. Meanwhile, Russia has essentially scratched off the entire southern Donbas, pushing the front across the border into Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, and they are poised to wrap up the central sector of front as the advance around Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka blooms.

We’re left, then, with a jarring disconnect. On the one hand, the Trump Administration approached Ukraine as if their election fundamentally changed everything and instantly raised the probability of a negotiated peace. Russia, however, rather rightly feels that nothing has changed at all. They have absorbed everything the west has thrown into the conflict, and they continue to both advance on the ground and relentlessly strike Ukraine on a material basis that they clearly view as sustainable, without unduly burdening civilian life in Russia.

If anyone was surprised, then, that Russia came to Istanbul only to reiterate the same terms they’ve been presenting from the beginning, they were clearly not paying attention. Russia has no inducement to soften its stance so long as it feels that the battlefield calculus is unchanged, and nothing that the west (or Ukraine) has done since 2022 has given Moscow a valid reason to revise its views. Russia’s baseline demands ought to be well understood by now, as is Russian willingness to achieve those aims kinetically. If Ukraine will not give up the Donbas at the table in Istanbul, it can be taken by the Russian Army. In the end, there’s very little difference.

We are left with Woodrow Wilson’s formulation. Not, of course, his high minded “peace without victory”, which is a nonstarter today just as it was in 1917. Rather, we’re left with the hardened and embittered Wilson of 1918. With the United States now an active belligerent in the conflict, Wilson’s outlook had darkened immensely, and he now categorically opposed negotiating with an undefeated Germany at all. He had concluded instead that “If Germany was beaten, she would accept any terms. If she was not beaten, he [Wilson] did not wish to make terms with her.”

If the olive branch has wilted, the pistol will do.

By Max Blumenthal & Anya Parampil, The Grayzone, 6/21/25

An official in the administration of President Donald Trump has told The Grayzone that CIA Director John Ratcliffe and US CENTCOM Commander Gen. Michael Kurilla have become vehicles for Israel’s Mossad and military as they seek to manipulate the US into attacking Iran. The official referred to Ratcliffe as “Mossad’s stenographer.”

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According to the official, Ratcliffe and Kurilla have pressured Trump to join Israel’s war more directly by regurgitating overblown briefings they received from the Israeli military and Mossad director David Barnea – but without informing the president they the intelligence derived from a foreign third party.

During the Trump administration’s meetings with Israeli intelligence officials including Barnea, the official said the Israelis have demonstrated a single-minded focus on regime change, clamoring for authorization to assassinate Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The official have emphasized that the moment to take out Khamenei is now.

The issue of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity is of secondary concern in the Israelis’ presentations, which the official characterized as tactless, hyper-aggressive exercises in fear-mongering. At one point, the Trump official recalled, an Israeli intelligence briefer declared that Iran could transfer a nuclear weapon to Yemen’s Houthi militia in less than a week.

According to the official, Trump’s lead negotiator with Iran, Steve Witkoff, has been pushing the president to preserve the diplomatic track. However, an Israeli assassination of Khamanei would almost certainly be the nail in the coffin of nuclear negotiations – which is precisely why the Israelis seem so determined to do it.

If the US enters the war by attacking Iran, the official fears that Iran will activate IRGC-backed Popular Mobilization Units to attack US troops and bases in Iraq and Syria, leading to American casualties and triggering escalation well beyond the initial scope of Iran’s nuclear program.

Having launched a damaging war of attrition with Iran, Tel Aviv is deploying every mechanism at its disposal to compel the US to lurch headlong into the conflict it initiated, but which it can not finish on its own.

Inside the Trump administration, the source told The Grayzone that top officials who have questioned the logic of attacking Iran such as Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and her deputy, former CIA officer and director for the National Counter-Terrorism Center Joe Kent, have been excluded from meetings by White House Chief of Staff Suzie Wiles.

Taking the lead in briefing the president is a highly suggestible CIA director whom Israel has groomed since he first entered Congress.

AIPAC director boasts of influence over Ratcliffe

This April, The Grayzone released exclusive audio of remarks by AIPAC CEO Elliot Brandt to an off-the-record Israel lobby session in Washington DC. Boasting of his organization’s success in recruiting members of Congress, he described CIA Director John Ratcliffe as a “lifeline” inside the administration.

“You know that one of the first candidates I ever met with as an AIPAC professional in my job when he was a candidate for Congress was a guy named John Ratcliffe,” Brandt recalled. “He was challenging a long time member of Congress in Dallas. I said, this guy looks like he could win the race, and, we go talk to him. He had a good understanding of issues, and a couple of weeks ago, he took the oath as the CIA director, for crying out loud. This is a guy that we had a chance to speak to, so there are, there are a lot – I wouldn’t call them lifelines, but there are lifelines in there.”

Besides Ratcliffe, AIPAC CEO Elliott Brandt also named Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, two former Republican congressmen cultivated by AIPAC in advance of their appointment to key national security positions in the Trump administration.

“They all have relationships with key AIPAC leaders from their communities,” said the AIPAC CEO. “So the lines of communication are good should there be something questionable or curious, and we need access on the conversation.”

This May, Waltz was outed by colleagues for secretly coordinating with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to orchestrate a US attack on Iran, costing him his job as National Security Council director. Secretary of State Rubio assumed the role of acting National Security Director, granting him control over more cabinet level positions than any US official since Henry Kissinger. Meanwhile, Ratcliffe quickly emerged as the key channel of Israeli influence in the administration.

The CIA director has come a long way since entering politics as the mayor of a backwater Texas town with a population of 7000.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad Director David Barnea in Jerusalem, April 2025

A small town Texas mayor becomes big time Israeli asset

With no experience in the US military or intelligence, Ratcliffe spent the early part of his political career as mayor of Heath, a small town outside of Dallas, which was broken by a year-long stint as a US Attorney between 2007-08. He entered Congress in 2014, and emerged two years later as one of Trump’s fiercest attack dogs on the Judiciary Committee. The backbencher also served on the House Intelligence Committee.

Trump rewarded Ratcliffe’s loyalty by nominating him as Director of National Intelligence in 2019, but quickly withdrew the nomination after Ratcliffe was exposed for lying about his role in several federal terrorism cases.

His most absurd embellishment was on the prosecution of the directors of the Dallas-based Holy Land Foundation, in which he boasted that “he convicted individuals who were funneling money to Hamas behind the front of a charitable organization.” In fact, Ratcliffe played no discernible role in the case at all, prompting several Republican senators to withdraw support for his nomination when the lie came to light.

It is notable nonetheless that Ratcliffe sought credit for taking down the Holy Land Foundation, as the case was one of the most politicized and legally dubious prosecutions of the Bush-era “war on terror,” leading to life sentences for Palestinian American defendants whose only crime was sending charitable donations to organizations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip which were not on any government watchlist, and which also received support from the International Committee of the Red Cross and USAID. What’s more, the case was heavily influenced by Israeli intelligence.

Following a mistrial that proved embarrassing for the US government, Israel’s Mossad dispatched an agent to Texas to testify against the Holy Land directors. The judge allowed the agent to testify in secret, with the courtroom cleared, and under an assumed identity as “Avi.” The agent proceeded to brandish a series of questionable documents that supposedly proved the Holy Land Foundation was set up as the nexus of a vast terrorist financing network that had enabled several suicide bombings by Hamas.

While Ratcliffe’s fantastical claims about his role in the case tanked his nomination in 2019, Trump successfully installed him as DNI the following year, paving the way for his nomination as CIA director upon Trump’s re-election.

In 2024, the Jewish Daily Forward listed Ratcliffe among “Trump’s Jewish advisors and pro-Israel cabinet.”

Gen. Michael Kurilla with then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, March 2023

Chief of Staff Suzie Wiles isolates Trump with “Israel’s favorite general”

The Trump official told The Grayzone that White House Chief of Staff Suzie Wiles has ensured that the president remains surrounded by Ratcliffe and Gen. Michael Kurilla in briefings related to Iran.

Ratcliffe is said to take dictation from the Mossad and read the documents they’ve prepared to the president without any sense of critical detachment, or disclose that the assessments came from a foreign liaison rather than US intelligence.

Then there is Gen. Kurilla, who appears singularly focused in meetings with Trump on making the case for a US attack on Iran. In 2024, the pro-Netanyahu Israeli outlet Israel Hayon described Kurilla as “a vital asset to Israel.” The UK’s Telegraph referred to Kurilla this June as “Israel’s favorite general.”

Former Pentagon officials have even speculated that Israel’s decision to launch an unprovoked surprise attack on Iran this June 13 was partially influenced by Kurilla’s looming retirement in July, as Tel Aviv did not want to go to war without him present at CENTCOM.

The Trump official told The Grayzone that Wiles has excluded Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, from crucial meetings where US intervention in Iran was discussed. That included a June 8 meeting at Camp David where Ratcliffe used a clumsy sports metaphor to insist that Iran was just days away from producing a nuclear weapon: “It’s like saying a football team marched 99 yards down the field, got to the one yard line and, oh, they don’t have the intention to score,” he argued to Trump.

Two days later, Gabbard released a social media video invoking the American military’s destruction of the Japanese city of Hiroshima with a nuclear bomb in 1945, and warned that a similar horror could soon unfold because “political elite warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers.”

Trump was reportedly infuriated by her comments. Asked by a reporter about Gabbard’s testimony this March that Iran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program, Trump grumbled, “I don’t care what she said,” then echoed Ratcliffe’s view – and by extension, that of the Israelis: “I think they were very close to having [a nuclear weapon].”

This may explain why Gabbard released a June 20 statement on Twitter/X insisting that her views on Iran’s nuclear enrichment were faithfully aligned with Trump’s, and had been distorted by a “dishonest media” seeking to “manufacture division.” Though the statement reaffirmed her commitment to President Trump, her assessment of Iran’s nuclear program did not differ from the evaluation she delivered in March, which determined Iran was not currently pursuing a nuclear bomb,

“America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months,” Gabbard claimed on Twitter/X, “if they decide to finalize the assembly.”

According to the Trump official, Chief of Staff Wiles has also excluded Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth from meetings on Iran, relying instead on Kurilla to represent the US military.

Vice President JD Vance has held a parallel series of meetings on Iran, the official said. In contrast to those controlled by Wiles, Vance has encouraged robust debate and included diverse perspectives. In public, however, Vance is constrained by the obligation to demonstrate loyalty to Trump.

For his part, Trump’s views are said to be shaped by constant exposure to Fox News, which has transformed in the past two weeks into a 24/7 commercial for war on Iran. Fox News’ coverage has become so transparently influenced by Israel’s propaganda mechanism that Steve Bannon, the former White House chief of staff and intellectual architect of the America First movement, called for a Foreign Agents Registration Act investigation of the network.

As Trump heads back to Washington on June 21, Bannon lamented that “the party is on,” suggesting the president had decided to go to war on Israel’s behalf.

By Katya Schwenk & Luke Goldstein, The Lever, 6/11/25

Florida is poised to eliminate long-standing guardrails limiting local investment in increasingly risky Israel bonds that help finance the country’s war efforts.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is set to quietly ban any financial-risk standards when local governments use public money to invest in bonds funding Israel’s government – just months after a major credit rating agency warned the bonds were at risk of default and a potential “junk” rating. 

By creating the special carveout and allowing unrestricted investments into a foreign country on the brink of regional war, Florida politicians now threaten to funnel an even greater share of local governments’ savings to the Netanyahu regime’s war efforts. 

The legislation also introduces a new financial model enabling local governments around the country to invest virtually limitless sums in the Israeli war effort, despite the mounting financial risk of doing so.

The Florida bill was brought to the legislature by one of the state’s wealthiest counties and home base of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort: Palm Beach, which is facing a lawsuit from its own residents for sinking 15 percent of its savings portfolio in debt-issued Israeli bonds, making the county the world’s largest investor in Israel bonds. The only foreign bonds that localities in Florida can invest in by law are from Israel.

Outside of direct military assistance to Israel from the federal government, bond purchases have become a key node for U.S. states and localities to provide billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel, particularly during the Israel-Hamas war following the Oct. 7 attacks.

The main broker for Israel bonds, which operates on behalf of the Israeli government, lobbied for the first-of-its-kind legislation, according to records reviewed by The Lever. 

The introduction of the bill came just months after the preeminent Wall Street credit rating agency Moody’s downgraded Israel’s bonds from an “A” to a “Baa” rating amid its mounting geopolitical turmoil, indicating a significantly higher risk that Israel fails to pay back its investors. 

The assessment also noted that the impact of the war on the country’s long-term financial prospects created “much higher [risk] than is typical” even at the lower investment rating. That means another potential downgrade could be on the horizon, which would put the country’s debt security into the lower “junk” bond tier, making it an even riskier asset to hold. 

Two other major U.S. credit rating agencies slightly downgraded Israel last year.

Because of the downgrades, Palm Beach and other counties invested in Israel, including Miami-Dade, would be in violation of their local investment policies for any future Israel bond purchases, which mandate an “A” rating for Israel bond purchases. Those restrictions would be wiped away by the new bill, which passed unanimously through the Florida legislature in April and now awaits signing by DeSantis before the end of the legislative session this month. 

“The bill is specifically designed to create an exemption [for Israel] just like the U.S. government has in lots of other areas where Israel would otherwise run afoul of U.S. law,” said Michael Omer-Man, the director of research at Democracy For The Arab World, an advocacy group that’s tracked the activity of Israel bonds. 

Another example Omer-Man cited is a federal law that prohibits U.S. aid to security forces committing human rights abuses, which human rights organizations have documented at the hands of the Israeli military.

The Florida legislation could also have widespread financial implications, according to municipal finance experts. 

“This is definitely a first,” said University of Chicago professor Justin Marlowe, who runs the school’s Center for Municipal Finance. “I’ve not seen any attempt to do some sort of a legislative carveout of the sort that we’re talking about here.” 

He said the policy is “paving the way for a big shift in behavior on the part of states and localities.”

Palm Beach County did not reply to The Lever’s request for comment on the bill.

A Possible “Foreign Agent”

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Israel has received a record-setting influx of $5 billion in financing from public and private U.S. investors to help address its mounting piles of debt. State and local governments make up $1.7 billion of that overall investment. 

Bonds are fixed-income securities bought by investors to loan the government money and are paid back over a long period of time, anywhere from two to 15 years, at a set interest rate.

Proceeds from these bonds return to Israel as a surplus budgetary fund for government projects, including to offset the costs of its military campaigns.

Some 90 states and localities already had millions of dollars of investments in Israel bonds on the books well before the Israel-Hamas war, but such efforts increased dramatically in the past year and a half. 

All of this U.S. investment is facilitated by the main underwriter and promoter of these government-backed instruments: the Development Corporation for Israel, also known as Israel Bonds. The operation has sales offices across the country, offering bonds to retail investors as well as public pensions, treasury funds, and institutional investors on Wall Street.

“Oct. 7 changed everything,” said Dani Naveh, the current president of the Development Corporation for Israel and former member of both the Israeli Knesset and a cabinet minister, earlier this month, announcing record U.S. sales of Israeli debt. “What followed has been nothing short of extraordinary. This $5 billion isn’t just capital, it is a global vote of confidence in the Israeli economy.”

Israel Bonds, whose head is selected by Israel’s finance minister, dates back to the early years of the country and played a crucial role in corralling U.S. financing for the Six-Day War in 1967 and later the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

The broker doesn’t just facilitate bond sales. Israel Bonds has transformed into an all-encompassing financial and political operation that lobbies for legislation to boost bond sales and hosts lavish private junkets to wine and dine politicians, according to an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists last year. 

These influence-peddling activities have raised legal questions about whether or not Israel Bonds is operating in the U.S. as an unregistered foreign agent. According to a letter sent to the Justice Department last year from Democracy for the Arab World Now calling for an investigation, Israel Bonds acts “at the direction and control of the Israeli government, acts as a publicity agent for Israel; promotes the public and political interests of Israel.”

Israel Bonds did not return a request for comment from The Lever.

Israel Bonds has successfully convinced numerous state governments, including Louisiana, Indiana, New Jersey, and New Mexico, to undo long-standing rules banning them from purchasing foreign government bonds. Israel Bonds has also gotten county governments to ease remaining local investment restrictions on foreign-issued debt. 

It’s not just Florida that’s poured out its coffers to show support for the U.S. ally. Under Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Arkansas’ public pension plan authorized a $50 million investment in Israel bonds this spring. Ohio, meanwhile, has invested more than $50 million since October 2023, bringing the state treasury’s holdings up to $260 million. New York State has committed a total $267 million from its state employees’ pension fund into Israel bonds.

Yet these investments pale in comparison to those of Palm Beach County, which under its Democratic local comptroller Joseph Abruzzo has become the world’s largest investor in Israel bonds. When Abruzzo took office in 2021, Israel bonds were capped at 5 percent of the county’s portfolio. In his first year, Abruzzo doubled the cap to 10 percent. Last year, the county voted again to raise the cap to 15 percent.

Abruzzo has since increased the county’s Israel bonds holdings to $700 million, up from just $40 million in 2022. According to county finance documents, Israel bonds now make up 16 percent of Palm Beach’s holdings.

Like other public investors in Israel bonds, Abruzzo has explicitly described his investment calculus as politically motivated, in direct support of Israel’s military operations. 

“There could be no greater advocacy that we could do in our office right now than support the state of Israel,” Abruzzo, a former reality TV star with a net worth of $16 million, said in the days after Oct. 7, announcing an initial $25 million round of bond purchases. More recently, he has denied that the motivations are anything other than strictly financial. Florida state law bars any investments of public savings for ideological reasons. 

In turn, as state and local treasuries ramp up their investments in Israel bonds, they have faced mounting public opposition. Protesters across the country have demanded public divestment from Israel bonds, citing their role in funding the carnage in Gaza.

Last May, several anonymous residents of Palm Beach County brought a lawsuit against Abruzzo over the mammoth investment in Israel bonds, arguing that the county’s $700 million purchase was “unprecedented,” “a great concentration of risk,” and violated its fiduciary duty to taxpayers, given the clear signs the bonds would be downgraded as Israel’s economy struggled. Florida statute, the plaintiffs noted, directs that local governments cannot invest to benefit “any social, political, or ideological interests.”

The plaintiffs in the case are Palestinian Americans, all of whom have lost friends and family members in Gaza, where tens of thousands of civilians have been killed since Oct. 7. 

“I feel such horror at my local taxes being used to fund such violence and destruction towards Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza,” one plaintiff said in a declaration last year.

The suit highlighted Palm Beach County’s ongoing financial troubles, including a $730 million funding gap for capital projects — all worsened by security costs for Mar-a-Lago, which the county must foot. “If the State of Israel were to default on these bonds, then Palm Beach County would have to find a way to pay its bills without money that it had counted on being available,” one expert is quoted as saying in the lawsuit.

In a November 2024 legal filing, attorneys for Palm Beach called the lawsuit against the county “entirely devoid of legal support.”

The lawsuit was voluntarily dropped in January due to a procedural issue, but a lawyer working on the case, Lydia Ghuman, confirmed to The Lever that the team intends to refile the suit in the fall. 

In the meantime, the ongoing legal battle — alongside national attention to Palm Beach County’s investments — may be an impetus behind the county’s efforts to get a carve-out for Israel bonds passed at the state level.

Ghuman emphasized, though, that the legislation wouldn’t put an end to her team’s case. “It doesn’t change the fact that… we have a bunch of other statutes regulating investments that we’re suing [Abruzzo] under,” she said. “If anything, it shows how he is not listening to the voice of his constituents and is manipulating different processes to allow him to make unchecked investments.”

A “Striking” Shift

After Moody’s downgraded Israel bonds, Palm Beach County faced a conundrum: Palm Beach’s local investment policy, like those in other counties, prohibits investment in bonds rated lower than an A credit rating. Not only did the policy threaten future county investments in Israel, it also exposed county officials to legal scrutiny over their current investment portfolio. 

In February, Florida lawmakers unveiled a bill that aimed to solve Palm Beach County’s problems. The legislation would amend state law to bar any local government from setting a minimum credit rating exclusively for Israel bonds. The legislature’s own bill analysis specifically cites the Moody’s downgrade and Palm Beach County’s investment policy as part of the rationale for why the legislation is necessary.

Abruzzo, the Palm Beach County treasurer, brought the bill to the legislature, and he testified in support of the legislation at a March public hearing. 

“I cannot thank the committee enough for taking up this bill to ensure we keep supporting what I consider our greatest ally Israel and investing in Israel bonds,” he told lawmakers.

Behind the scenes, the Development Corporation for Israel used its lobbying muscle to push for the bill’s passage. The group hired the well-connected Florida lobbying shop Capital City Consulting, which includes numerous former DeSantis aides and staffers. 

Meanwhile, Palm Beach County advocated for the legislation through the lobbying titan Ballard Partners, whose Florida alumni include Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi. 

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Both chambers of the Florida legislature subsequently passed the bill unanimously. A DeSantis spokesperson confirmed to The Lever that the bill “has not reached his desk.” There are a number of bills still awaiting a signature from the governor in the remaining weeks of the Florida legislative session.

Should DeSantis sign the bill, it could set a precedent for other states and localities to take on more financial risk to finance Israel’s war effort. Abruzzo, Ghuman noted, holds a position with an Israel Bonds’ leadership group, composed of treasurers across the country. “He’s already in a position of power where he can spread his ideas to other states,” she said.

Daniel Garrett, a professor of finance at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Lever that while he didn’t think that the guidance would have much impact on local investment decisions, he wasn’t aware of any comparable legislation. 

“I can’t think of any other kind of encouragement to invest in risky securities,” he said, although he added that most states set various “restrictions on how investment policies can be written.”

Marlowe at the University of Chicago emphasized that the bill was part of a “striking” government investment shift allowing a “serious concentration of risk in these portfolios in a way that we had never seen before.” 

He added, “It’s one thing for a county to buy up these bonds in the first place, it’s another to explicitly de-diversify the portfolio, which flies in the face of the philosophy of how to invest public money.”

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By Brian McDonald, Substack, 6/1/25

Brian McDonald is Irish and a long time Russia-based journalist. Writing about politics, sports and culture.

In the current Western discourse about Eastern European transformation, one hears Poland invoked like a hymn. It is, undeniably, a triumph. From the grey fatigue of post-communist inertia, Poland has emerged into something striking: a country that is modern, stable, and punching above its demographic weight. In nominal GDP terms alone, it has multiplied its national output fivefold since 2000, lifted living standards, integrated into the EU, rebuilt its infrastructure and created global firms. It is a remarkable success story.

But there is a strange silence—one that is becoming harder to ignore. Because if Poland’s economic rise is described as “nothing short of a miracle (Michael A. Arouet on X),” then what language is left to describe Russia’s trajectory over the same period? From a nominal GDP of $259 billion in 2000 to over $2.2 trillion in 2024, Russia’s nominal economic expansion dwarfs Poland’s in both absolute and relative terms. And in purchasing power parity (PPP), the gap is even starker: Russia has risen from $1.1 trillion in 2000 to over $5.2 trillion today, while Poland’s economy grew from around $420 billion to $1.6 trillion.

And even those numbers may understate the case. World Economics, using alternative methodologies that adjust for the informal economy and outdated GDP base year calculations, estimates Russia’s true PPP GDP in 2024 at over $7.5 trillion — roughly 26% higher than the World Bank’s official figure. Their model factors in a shadow economy that accounts for at least 26% of all economic activity, and potentially much more. Other studies, such as the Shadow Economy Index by Sauka and Putnins, estimated the informal sector at nearly 45% of GDP as recently as 2018.

This suggests that much of Russia’s economic life — from envelope wages to unregistered businesses — operates off the books. It’s messy, opaque, and far from ideal. But it also means the country’s real productive activity is significantly higher than what’s recorded. In nominal terms, Russia may look like a mid-size economy. In practice, it behaves more like a large one hiding behind a bureaucratic veil.

None of this is to diminish Poland’s achievement. Quite the opposite. Its progress is the product of hard work, strategic policy choices, and—crucially—European integration. Massive inflows of EU funds, combined with a committed and mobile population, created conditions for a genuine leap forward. But when commentators cite Poland as living proof of the virtues of EU membership, free markets, and entrepreneurial spirit, they often imply—or outright assert—that it is Poland’s embrace of Brussels that made the difference.

And here is where the silence creeps in. Because Russia, by any reasonable measure, has posted greater economic growth than Poland over the past two decades—despite facing every headwind Poland was spared. No EU funds. No single market access. No structural aid. And, since 2014, the most sustained regime of Western sanctions applied to any major economy in modern times.

Yes, Russia has immense natural resources. So do many nations. The trick is not having oil and gas—it is utilizing them while building a functioning economy beneath. Few expected Russia to make it work. Many predicted collapse (just Google the subject). But in a country often dismissed as a gas station with nukes, there has been something far more complicated, and inconvenient for some, happening: genuine, sustained growth.

This is not a paean to Russia, nor a denial of its flaws. Corruption, capital flight, inequality—all real and enduring. But what grates is the refusal to even acknowledge its economic performance in the same breath as Poland’s. It’s as if certain analysts fear that recognising this would somehow weaken their preferred narrative: that Brussels brings prosperity, and turning from it brings ruin.

But the numbers are not guided by political preferences. They are arithmetic. Poland’s growth deserves praise. But Russia’s deserves recognition too—especially when it has come through geopolitical frostbite, financial exclusion, and institutional hostility. That doesn’t make Russia a model. It makes it an inconvenient outlier.

There is no need for rivalry here. Poland’s rise is not Russia’s loss. Nor should Russia’s survival under duress be read as proof of sainthood. But the lopsidedness in how their stories are told—and what is omitted—reveals more about the storytellers than the countries themselves.

Eastern Europe is not a morality tale for outsiders to exploit. It is a region of hundreds of millions of real people, of histories and choices. And while Poland’s road to prosperity may have gone through Brussels, it doesn’t follow that every path must.

To acknowledge this is not to diminish Poland. It is to finally speak about the region with the honesty it deserves.