Tag: geopolitics

VP Vance at a WH press briefing. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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Dear Vice President Vance,

Since this is an open letter, please indulge me as I spell out some things that you surely know but which some readers may not.

Donald Trump has done the impossible. He has created a global humanitarian and political crisis, yet he has managed to get most of the world to tune it out simply by lying about it continually. Trump has now announced that a “deal” with Iran is imminent 39 times. This is what Steve Bannon called “flooding the zone with bullshit.” (more…)

Trump and Xi Jinping (Official WH Photo by Daniel Torok)

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Beneath the surface of everyday American life, the pork on supermarket shelves, the seeds planted across Midwestern fields, and the agrochemicals sprayed on crops from Texas to Iowa, lies a quietly assembled architecture of Chinese influence. Through corporate acquisition, land accumulation, data harvesting, and regulatory manipulation, the Chinese Communist Party has embedded itself within the systems that feed and power America. The scale of this penetration is vast, its implications alarming, and the oversight mechanisms designed to prevent it have proven, repeatedly, inadequate. (more…)

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David R. Shedd & Andrew Badger
The Great Heist: China’s Epic Campaign to Steal America’s Secrets
New York: Harper, 2025

“Certainly no one has ever denied the Chinaman’s extraordinary economic efficiency. Winnowed by ages of grim elimination in a land populated to the uttermost limits of subsistence, the Chinese race is selected as no other for survival under the fiercest conditions of economic stress. At home the average Chinese lives his whole life literally within a hand’s breadth of starvation. Accordingly, when removed to the easier environment of other lands, the Chinaman brings with him a working capacity which simply appalls his competitors. That urbane Celestial, Doctor Wu-Ting-Fang, well says of his own people: ‘Experience proves that the Chinese as all-round laborers can easily outdistance all competitors. They are industrious, intelligent, and orderly. They can work under conditions that would kill a man of less hardy race; in heat that would kill a salamander, or in cold that would please a polar bear, sustaining their energies through long hours of unremitting toil with only a few bowls of rice.’”—Lothrop Stoddard (more…)

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David E. Sanger
New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West
New York: Crown, 2024

The Second Cold War has started. This simmering conflict is one in which Russia and China are united against Western Civilization in general and America more specifically. This situation developed day by day underneath a sky of optimism that existed internationally in the 1990s. (more…)

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China’s “Century of Humiliation” began in 1839 with the First Opium War. The Qing Dynasty was in decline, and foreign powers began stealing territories and extorting trade concessions through wars and military expeditions. It was a long century that only really ended in 1949 with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. (more…)

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On 2024’s April Fool’s Day, fighter-bombers from modern Israel’s American-funded and American-equipped air force bombed the Embassy of Iran in Damascus, Syria. A fortnight later, the Iranians responded with a drone and missile attack that was mostly thwarted. Then came the appearance of calm between the two hostile nations for several months. (more…)

Herman Kahn, author of On Escalation.

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So often in geopolitical discussions commentators invoke the specter of escalation and the prospect of climbing the “escalation ladder,” rung by rung, towards ultimate nuclear cataclysm. Unfortunately, we are in the midst of one of the worst global crises in living memory where escalation is being recklessly pursued by Benjamin Netanyahu in particular and the Israel Lobby more generally. Fitting the historic pattern, the Israel Lobby is using their gentile fall guy, President Donald Trump, to achieve their perceived goals. (more…)

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On April Fools’ Day, Donald Trump addressed the nation about the Iran War. It would have been too painful to listen to his adenoidal droning and borscht-belt insult comedian shtick, so I just read the transcript. He said nothing new. It was just a live version of his social media tweets: rambling, mendacious, self-contradictory, delusional, emotionally labile, and laced with insults and threats. I wish he were joking, but he probably wasn’t.

When it was all over, however, I was certain of one thing: Trump has learned nothing so far. So he’s going to send in ground troops. (more…)

Klaus Schwab looking like a Bond villain.

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Part 2 available here and Part 3 here.

On July 9, 2023, a hiker stumbled upon the decomposing remains of a teenage boy at a campsite in Gunnison National Forest, Colorado. The hiker alerted the authorities who found two additional corpses belonging to middle-aged women in a tent at the campsite. All three bodies were severely underweight, and their cause of death was determined to have been starvation. The three were estimated to have already been dead for several months at the time of their discovery. (more…)

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Late last year, my big prediction for 2026 was that Donald Trump would be forced to step down as US President because he was destroying the coalition that elected him, thus making it increasingly likely that the Left would return to power with a vengeance. That, frankly, is a terrifying prospect, especially to people like Elon Musk, who will probably be destroyed if the Left gets back in the White House. (more…)

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There is a silver lining to the black cloud that is the ongoing Iran War. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) assets have been moved from South Korea to the Persian Gulf. How should Americans walk away from South Korea? By any means necessary.

Otherwise, the breakout of the Iran War is a frustrating disappointment. It appears the Israelis have gotten us into yet another desert disaster. (more…)

Iranians marching in Tehran cheer at an airstrike ahead of them.

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In the run up to the 2026 Iran War, I described how the most straightforward and optimistic path to victory for the US was:

1. A flawless conventional military victory, followed by
2. A successful Persian insurrection, followed by
3. Pahlavi running a corruption free illiberal democracy.

I generously gave each of these conditions a 10% chance of happening, and thus a 1/1000 chance of success overall. (more…)

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As an American, I would like to think well of my country. But thanks to Donald Trump, we are now wondering if 175 Iranian schoolgirls were slaughtered by Jews as a Purim blood sacrifice to Yahweh — or slaughtered by an Affirmative Action-American as a sacrifice to Moloch or maybe Caliban. As an American taxpayer, I would like my government not to make me culpable in war crimes. But America is not ruled by and for Americans.

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