Economy and Defense

Europe believes it is at peace. It believes it is a concerned bystander, morally and materially supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression. In truth, Europe is already a belligerent—not against Russia alone, but against the United States. The war it is fighting is a proxy war between Washington and Moscow, conducted on Ukrainian soil, financed by…

Introduction In August 2026, a Ukrainian military pickup truck drove through a village near the front lines. Unbeknownst to the soldiers inside, a Russian FPV drone was hidden behind the gate of a private yard—out of sight, but not out of hearing. Equipped with a microphone, the “lurker drone” detected the sound of the approaching…

A Clausewitzian Analysis of the Current Strategic Predicament Part I: The Russian Weltanschauung—War as Existence and the Demonstration of Superiority “We see, therefore, that War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means… for the political view…

In August 2026, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a new sanctions package against Iran, branded “Operation Economic Outcast,” threatening that anyone who launders money for the Iranian regime “will be removed from the US dollar system.” Yet this very threat exposes the policy’s central weakness—the entire architecture rests on a single assumption: that Iran…

The global military balance has shifted decisively. Russia has achieved number-one military supremacy worldwide—not through sheer numerical advantage, but through technological breakthroughs and strategic adaptation that have rendered American conventional superiority obsolete. The Hypersonic Revolution Russia’s hypersonic weapons program has fundamentally changed the calculus of modern warfare. The Kremlin fields four operational hypersonic systems: These…

Forget the blinking boards and the traders screaming in the pits. Let’s strip this down to the bone. If you own gold, watch it, or are thinking about jumping in, here is the unvarnished, back-alley truth about exactly what this global mess means for your stack. Gold Is Trapped in a Nasty, Brutal Tug-of-War Right…

The Illusion of “One Price” When you turn on the news and see “Crude oil is trading at $X per barrel,” you are looking at the futures price—the price of a financial contract, not the price anyone actually pays to take oil off a ship at the dock. It is the difference between looking at…

OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, NEBRASKA — 0230 CENTRAL The building was called the Underground Command Center. Forty-five feet of reinforced concrete sat between the men and the Nebraska sky. The walls were shock-mounted. The air was filtered. The communications suites ran on redundant landlines, microwave, satellite, and high-frequency radio, and every one of them was…

European bureaucrats are predictably failing to understand the seriousness of the upcoming energy shock, as they are not taking any steps to mitigate it or correct past mistakes, Russian presidential special representative for investment and economic cooperation with foreign countries and CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev wrote this on his page…

Let me begin by offering my apology to all who posted comments that were then put in moderation — by the software, not by me. I just returned home from Calgary and am in the process of cleaning up the pending folder. I have not deleted any comments… They all are now posted. The reason for…

Subtitle: Final Warning: The Window to Protect Your Wealth Is Closing For generations, the Swiss investor has been taught a simple mantra: diversify, hold American assets, and trust that the United States will always act as the world’s financial anchor. The 2nd and 3rd pillar pension funds, the portfolios tucked away in Zurich private banks,…

The world is waking up to a terrifying reality: the United States government is no longer content with merely manipulating the price of gold and silver on the COMEX. It is now waging a full-spectrum war to control the physical metal itself. The recent “technical halts” and price smashes on the CME were not isolated…

Four years ago, Russia’s decision to launch a military operation in Ukraine stunned almost everyone, including supporters and critics alike. Few believed Moscow would take such a drastic step. For decades, the prevailing assumption in global politics had been that force was no longer a legitimate way to resolve disputes. When military action did occur,…

State Secretariat for Swiss Security Policy’s 2026 strategy document (SSEKS): “Growing social polarization and loss of trust in state institutions can weaken Switzerland’s resilience and its ability to respond to crises.” (…) Former Swiss Army Chief Thomas Süssli posed a question: “In the new world order, being rich and weak is not an advantage.” A…

By: Christopher Maffei “The U.S.-Israel relationship persists through inertia and domestic politics, not strategic logic. It represents nostalgia for an American-dominated world order that no longer exists.” The strategic relationship between the United States and Israel has been rendered completely obsolete by a single, decisive factor: Russia’s preeminent military dominance through advanced hypersonic weapon systems.…

The year 2026 ought to be remembered as the moment the old pretenses finally collapsed—when spheres of influence, long denied in polite company, reasserted themselves, and the lingering afterglow of colonial empire began, at last, to dim. Above all, we are witnessing a reversion to an older grammar of international conduct: rules once familiar, now…

By: Christopher Maffei The cockpit was a cathedral of focused calm. The Weapon Systems Officers were strapped into their aft stations. Outside their small windows, the world had dissolved into a uniform, luminous white—a pure and silent abyss. They were on the ILS, and the Instrument Landing System’s needles were almost centered. The routine of…

By Christopher Maffei Movement I: The Grunt’s Gospel According to Private First Class Ricky “Green” Malone, 101st Airborne Division July 1st, 1970. 0642 hours. Thua Thien Province, The morning mist wasn’t clinging; it was suffocating, a wet, woolen shroud shoved down the throat of the A Shau Valley no less than two thousand feet below.…

Kapustin Yar, Astrakhan Oblast. 03:47 Local Time. The command was not spoken. A one-time cryptographic packet was injected into a secure fiber-optic line that bypassed even the General Staff. In the Strategic Rocket Forces’ command Operation Center, Colonel Pavel Voronin watched as the authentication glyphs flashed green on his screen. The order bore the highest…

Ah, the American Dream. A land of opportunity, where any man can pull himself up by his bootstraps, provided his bootstrap-pulling transactions don’t trigger a hidden algorithm deep in the bowels of the banks’ AI mainframe, flagging him as a “person of interest” to a squad of risk-averse bureaucrats with the power to vanish his…

DATELINE: SOME GODFORSAKEN FESTERING SORE ON THE MAP CALLED DĨ AN BASE CAMP, OCTOBER 1971… The air in the hooch wasn’t air. It was a condition—a foul, breathing paste of mildew, dried buffalo shit, stale beer, and the ever-present cloying reek of DEET and sweat… the smell of a war that had gone rancid, left too…

The confluence of revolutionary weapons technology and American strategic myopia has not merely dated the Atlantic security architecture; it has weaponized it into an instrument of profound, self-inflicted vulnerability. A clear-eyed audit of the strategic landscape, drawing from both adversarial doctrine and internal Western disillusionment, renders a verdict of gross negligence against United States policy.…

“The dependency created by the F-35’s technical architecture poses a fundamental tension with this constitutional mandate—fedlex.admin.ch “ Switzerland’s procurement of the F-35A Lightning II, is framed as a sovereign choice for national defense, representing a profound and potentially perilous entanglement with a foreign technological ecosystem whose most critical control mechanisms remain outside Swiss jurisdiction. At…

The American illusion has become a financial suicide pact Switzerland stands at a precipice, not of its own mountains, but of a financial, geopolitical, and moral chasm of American making. For decades, the Swiss financial and political classes have operated under a dangerous illusion: that integration with the United States—its markets, its geopolitical umbrella, its…

If you had told me years ago that we would live to witness the undisputed heavyweight champion of military alliances, NATO, standing by—essentially paralyzed—while its primary adversary carved out an entirely new theater of operations right under its nose, I wouldn’t have believed you. Yet, that is precisely the reality we are waking up to…

The precarious relationship between sovereign debt, military expansion, and existential national crisis finds stark expression in two historical epochs: Nazi Germany’s rearmament in the 1930s and the contemporary United States’ fiscal-military posture. By examining Germany’s use of MEFO bills to secretly finance rearmament and the subsequent drive to war for economic survival, and contrasting it…

The “rules-based order” is dead and Washington now acts without boundaries A year has passed since November 2024, when Donald Trump won the US presidential election for the second time. And it makes more sense to start the clock there, rather than on Inauguration Day. The political and psychological shift began immediately. From that moment,…

The President thinks we have the best missiles in the world. The truth is far different: our missiles do not work. “We have the super-fast missiles — tremendous number of the super-fast. We call them ‘super-fast,’ where they’re four, five, six, and even seven times faster than an ordinary missile. We need that because, again,…

Ted Postol: “Ukraine’s attacks on radars that are part of Russia’s nuclear early warning system put us on the brink of disaster. The problem is that unlike the Americans, Moscow does not have a capable space-based warning system. The Poseidon underwater robot with the largest nuclear warhead ever built was apparently approved by Vladimir Putin…

Christopher Maffei: Replacing one bad idea with another When the Marine Corps adopted a concept called Force Design as its new warfighting concept in 2019, so called military experts hailed it as a groundbreaking adoption of emerging technology. Unfortunately, most of the praise has come from senior Marine leaders in the form of Press releases…

Many now speak of humanity’s drift towards World War III, imagining events similar to those of the 20th century. But war evolves. It will not begin with a June 1941 Barbarossa-style invasion or a Cuban Missile Crisis-style nuclear standoff. In fact, the new world war is already underway – it’s just that not everyone has…

Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb has crossed the threshold when it comes to triggering a Russian nuclear response. How Russia and the United States respond could determine the fate of the world. In 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that “The nuclear weapons remain the most important guarantee of Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and play a…

Hector is tricked into combat and killed beneath Troy’s city walls. Trump might well heed the moral to The Iliad story. Last year in St Petersburg, I asked the question: Will the West come out of its cultural war as a more amenable potential partner? Or will the West disaggregate, and resort to bellicosity in an effort to hold…

I am being asked if the issuance by the dreadful Biden regime of a new package of sanctions against Russian oil exports are a gift to the incoming Trump presidency or a poisoned chalice. My answer is neither. The sanctions, if the incoming Trump regime leaves them in place, are a poisoned chalice for the…

In the end, the election was about despair. Despair over futures that evaporated with deindustrialization. Despair over the loss of 30 million jobs in mass layoffs. Despair over austerity programs and the funneling of wealth upwards into the hands of rapacious oligarchs. Despair over a liberal class that refuses to acknowledge the suffering it orchestrated…

In a recent interview I was asked who would win the American presidential election.  In the US the definition of a “win” can easily be a Democrat theft. Over the many decades during which in former times Democrats represented the working class, the Democrats gained political control of the cities in which the working class resided.  This…

Centuries ago a boy was born. His parents understood that he had a remarkable fate before him which reflected the Will of the Great Shaman. His hair was light, his eyes were light green, and his skin was pale. It seemed obvious that he enjoyed divine favour. But then, one day, the boy’s father –…

While the rest of the world builds a multi-polar future and tries to promote a lasting, respectful and cooperative peace, in Europe, Parliament is babbling about war. The deception has been there from the start When the European Union as a political institution was established on 1 November 1993 with the Maastricht Treaty, following the…

INTERVIEW TO UKRAINA.RU Sergei A. Karaganov, Professor Emeritus, Dr. hab. in History, Academic Supervisor of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, Higher School of Economics, speaks in an exclusive interview with Ukraina.ru Question—What are your impressions from the discussion with Vladimir Putin on the nuclear issue at a SPIEF panel session? Sergei—Unfortunately, the time was…

Sen. Kamala Harris is rising in the polls after dramatically confronting former Vice President Joe Biden during the Democratic primary debate about his opposition to federally mandated busing for desegregation. The following week, however, Harris backed away from saying that busing should always be federally mandated, calling it just one “tool that is in the toolbox” for…

I had just written an ordinary article about several elections, including that of the coming US spectacle this fall—of which I remain characteristically dismissive. Then, on Saturday, all hell broke loose in Pennsylvania. I still stand by my previous observations, which are appended hereto. But something changed at Trump’s ill-fated rally. I’m unsure if trying…

Given the unstable situation in the U.S., it is worth analyzing the possible impacts of geopolitical changes on American foreign policy. Amid the elections and rising domestic social tensions, the future of the U.S. appears extremely uncertain – largely because American strategists have not yet properly understood the nature of the new world order. The…

On June 12th, the Russian frigate Admiral Gorshkov steams through the clear waters off the Cuban coast; she is accompanied by the Kazan (a Yassen). And they are not alone, most likely in the North, the Orel (an Oscar) has been quietly hovering in deep water off the Atlantic Coast with her sister ship the…

США близки к «фатальному» просчету в своих попытках урегулировать конфликт с Россией и Украиной», — предупредил заместитель министра иностранных дел Сергей Рябков Крах «История всегда подчеркивает последние события», — скорбно заметил Альберт Шпеер своим американским следователям сразу после окончания последней мировой войны. Однако Шпеер и его американские похитители не могли знать, что их судьбы будут…

„Die USA stehen kurz davor, bei ihren Versuchen, mit Russland und dem Ukraine-Konflikt umzugehen, eine ‚fatale‘ Fehlkalkulation zu begehen“, warnte der stellvertretende Außenminister Sergej Rjabkow. Zusammenbruch „Die Geschichte betont immer die Endereignisse“, bemerkte Albert Speer kurz nach dem Ende des letzten Weltkriegs traurig gegenüber seinen amerikanischen Vernehmern. Doch Speer und seine amerikanischen Entführer konnten nicht…

« Les États-Unis sont sur le point de commettre une erreur de calcul « fatale » dans leurs tentatives pour résoudre le conflit entre la Russie et l’Ukraine », a prévenu le vice-ministre des Affaires étrangères Sergueï Ryabkov. Effondrement « L’histoire met toujours l’accent sur les événements terminaux », observait tristement Albert Speer à ses…

” The US is close to making a ‘fatal’ miscalculation in its attempts to deal with Russia and the Ukraine conflict ” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has warned Collapse “History always emphasizes terminal events” Albert Speer observed mournfully to his American interrogators just after the end of the last World War. Yet, Speer and…

The core issues at the heart of release of hostages held in Gaza were two: A complete cessation to the war and full withdrawal of all Israeli forces. Netanyahu’s position was that whatever the hostage outcome, the IDF would return to Gaza and that the war there might continue for ten years, he said. These…

Politico reports that the DNC is planning to move the Chicago convention partially online in order to “tamp down demonstrators” against Biden’s genocide in Gaza. The Democratic Party’s apathy toward this election is almost as blatant as its support for police crackdowns on political dissent. When nobody in power will lift a finger to earn your vote…

Strategic stability is usually understood as the absence of incentives for a nuclear-armed power to launch a massive first strike. Typically, it’s viewed primarily in military-technical terms. The reasons why an attack may be contemplated are usually not taken into account. This idea emerged in the middle of the last century, when the USSR had…

Growing Threat Russia and its leadership seem to be facing a difficult choice. It becomes increasingly clear that a clash with the West cannot end even if we win a partial or even a crushing victory in Ukraine. It will be a really partial victory if we liberate four regions. It will be a slightly…

By Michael Brenner Is there now a moral void at the heart of Western societies?  That question haunts us as governments in the United States and Europe act as accomplices in Israeli’s atrocious crimes against the Palestinians. The Jewish state’s conduct meets the standard of genocide as stated in the United Nations Convention on Genocide…

I was planning on publishing Part 2 of my article on Alexei Navalny. However, today Alexei Navalny’s body is being laid to rest in a funeral service in Moscow attended by a few thousand well-wishers and supporters. My wife has always cautioned me not to speak ill of the dead. Especially on the day their…

The West has set itself on a path of collective suicide — both moral and economic. Western leaders are experiencing two stunning events: defeat in Ukraine, genocide in Palestine. The first is humiliating, the other shameful. Yet, they feel no humiliation or shame. Their actions show vividly that those sentiments are alien to them –…

Sian state started to exist as a centralized state in 862. This is considered to be the year of creation of the Russian state because this year the townspeople of Novgorod (a city in the North-West of the country) invited Rurik, a Varangian prince from Scandinavia, to reign. In 1862, Russia celebrated the 1000th anniversary…

Paul Craig Roberts, Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy, a PhD in Economics and US Undersecretary of Treasury in the Reagan administration, By Paul Craig Roberts: American politics is in crisis. The evidence is overwhelming that Biden was not elected but was put into the presidency via a stolen election, and the evidence is…

Remarque : la grammaire est traduite automatiquement Alors que l’été caspien se transforme en fin d’automne, une brume basse masque un paysage de cratères à un drone russe en orbite au-dessus des steppes de Zaporizhzhia. Sous la fumée et le brouillard, gisaient des milliers d’épaves incendiées et criblées de balles. Un cimetière où reposent les corps…

As the Caspian Summer turns into late Autumn, a low-hanging mist obscures a cratered landscape from a Russian drone orbiting over the steppes of Zaporizhzhia. Underneath the smoke and fog, lay thousands of burnt-out bullet-ridden wrecks. A graveyard, where the bodies of tens of thousands of Ukrainian Infantry lay strewn across the Battlefield. On these “Bloodlands”,…

Remarque : la grammaire est traduite automatiquement La rencontre de Vladimir Poutine avec Kim Jong Un constitue l’un des tournants majeurs de l’histoire mondiale. À partir de maintenant, les sanctions américaines ne sont pas plus pertinentes que la désintégration de ses villes. À bien des égards, ce gigantesque désastre de la politique étrangère américaine n’a pas…

Vladimir Putin’s meeting with Kim Jong Un is one of the major turning points in world history. From this moment forward, American sanctions are no more relevant than its disintegrating cities. In many ways, this gigantic American foreign policy disaster has no equal in American history. And after this meeting between Russia and North Korea there is…

Remarque : la grammaire est traduite automatiquement Attaquer l’économie suisse à travers le ventre mou des banques suisses La guerre contre Helvetica continue Quand on entre dans le monde de la banque suisse et des accusations américaines d’évasion fiscale. Nous entrons dans un monde de pur mythe. Nous entrons dans un monde de dénonciateurs et de…

Will the Russian Nuclear Arsenal Function? As of late, this seems to be one of the most misplaced questions of our time. Therefore the question is, ‘Will the enemy’s nuclear arsenal operate as designed and is it a legitimate threat and will the warheads detonate?’ First, to understand this critical question you need to have good…

Remarque : la grammaire est traduite automatiquement L’idée des ovnis circule à Washington depuis un certain temps. Liée à cela, il y a la notion que les États-Unis ont procédé à une ingénierie inverse de cette technologie et qu’elle sera opérationnelle à un moment donné. Et devine quoi? Apparemment, ce moment est venu. Nous avons maintenant…

Die Idee von UFOs kursiert schon seit einiger Zeit in Washington. Damit verbunden ist auch die Vorstellung, dass die Vereinigten Staaten diese Technologie rückentwickelt haben und sie zu einem unbestimmten Zeitpunkt einsatzbereit sein wird. Und rate was? Offenbar ist diese Zeit gekommen. Wir haben jetzt eine Gruppe von Whistleblowern, die offenbar bestätigt haben, dass die…

The notion of UFOs has been floating around Washington for some time. This has also been coupled with the idea that the United States has reverse-engineered this technology and it will be ready for use at some undetermined date. And guess what? Apparently that time has come. We now have a group of whistleblowers that seem to…

Remarque : la grammaire est traduite automatiquement C’était un été chaud en Lituanie lorsque l’avion a commencé à arriver à Vilnius. Peu de temps après leur arrivée, les dignitaires du théâtre totalitaire ont commencé à défiler sur les petits jets comme s’ils se dirigeaient vers un décor de Fidelio. Bien sûr, c’était le sommet de l’OTAN…

Aus dem Englischen übersetzt Es war ein heißer Sommer in Litauen, als das Flugzeug in Vilnius ankam. Kurz nach der Ankunft begannen die Würdenträger des totalitären Theaters, die kleinen Jets zu paradieren, als seien sie auf dem Weg zu einer Bühne für Fidelio. Natürlich war dies der NATO-Gipfel unter der Leitung von Jens Stoltenberg. Eines…

Subtext: The Specter of Franco’s Spain in Vilnius It was a hot summer in Lithuania when the aircraft started to arrive in Vilnius. Shortly after arrival, the dignitaries of the totalitarian theater started to parade off the small jets as if they were heading to a stage set for Fidelio. Of course, this was the…

Subtext: The Coup that Wasn’t and The Red Iron Wall To start with, in a proxy conflict of this magnitude, the people connected to this war will be experiencing extreme distortions in information. And unless you are on the battlefield or sitting in a NATO operations center. It will be impossible to understand what reality…

It was a warm summer morning in Berlin when Jens sat down to eat breakfast. He sat down calmly, ignoring the humanity around him and after politely eating his small portion of millet and potato puffs; he stood up and went to his entourage to get the latest information on Ukraine. Today he was giving a speech…

Let’s put our cards right out on the table. With four more Leopard 2s smashed, there is not an Army in the world that can crack the Russian defenses. Not one. Let’s explore another idea and imagine another scenario in the near future. Given the intensity of the fighting in the center of the line.…

Subtext: Lets Pretend Russia Did It In a combined arms conflict on this level, it’s typical for retreating forces to blow up dams to slow the advancing enemy. In this case, we know who blew up the dam because Ukraine said — we are planning to do the deed. It is public knowledge, the Ukrainian…

The remnants of the Ukrainian 23rd and 31st mechanized brigades (in separate combined units) have regrouped and renewed their attacks in Donetsk and Zaporozhye. The Ukrainian infantry, some only in their teens and with no combat experience, were repelled with heavy losses on the line of contact. Including, eight burned out German Leopards, that were…

Subtext: The Myth of Russian Military Incompetence — Continued… To start with, the use of gas, nuclear weapons, and the mass bombing of cities such as the bombing of Dresden, (and) the carpet bombing of North Vietnam is a concept known as ‘total war’ or the concept of ‘total politics’. This warfare was reintroduced in the Napoleonic period and…

Subtext: Thank God One thing I will never forget about the Department of Defense is the enormous size of the bureaucracy. In fact, it is so large — any one individual has almost no meaning. And it doesn’t really matter if you’re the Secretary of Defense or the chairman of the joint chiefs. In the end, all DOD employees are…

According to General Pat Ryder, F-16s will be delivered to Kyiv. And we can never forget, these aircraft are one of the most numerous fourth-generation jets in history. They are an elegant aircraft and — old. Some say these aircraft will be delivered by September of this year. If you expect Ukrainian pilots to transition from MiG-29s to F-16s…