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Full Discussion Transcribed After the Break:
by Rod D. Martin and Erick Stakelbeck
August 20, 2026
On Stakelbeck Tonight: Erick Stakelbeck and I discuss:
Why Putin’s war is destroying Russia
Why China’s “alliance” with Russia is entirely predatory
Golden Dome, the Golden Fleet, and rebuilding America’s atrophied defense industry
The “Islamic NATO”: threat to America or to Iran?
How global energy is shifting from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of America
PLUS why the midterm math may defy the pundits
It’s 24 minutes of in-depth analysis you won’t want to miss. Watch and share!
See Also:
Hillsdale College’s wonderful “The Story of America” series is now FREE for you to watch! Learn about the most important episodes in America’s Founding.
Click here for the full series!
Our Full Discussion:
Erick Stakelbeck: Welcome to Stakelbeck Tonight. I’m Erick Stakelbeck, and the war in Ukraine may have just entered a dangerous new phase.
For more than four years, Vladimir Putin has tried to grind Ukraine into submission: missiles, drones, artillery, a war of attrition designed to break Ukraine’s military and its will to fight. But now Ukraine is sending Putin a very different message. The war is coming home to Russia.
On Sunday, Ukraine unleashed one of the largest drone assaults of the entire war, sending hundreds of long-range drones deep into Russian territory. Russian authorities claim they shot down over 800 drones across the country, but they didn’t stop them all.
South of Moscow, a massive logistics hub, part of Russia’s largest online retailer called Wildberries, went up in flames. This wasn’t some remote outpost on the Ukrainian border. This was the Moscow region. Ukraine is showing that its long-range strike capability can reach deep into Putin’s backyard, targeting the logistics, industrial, and economic infrastructure that helps keep Russia running.
And it comes as the human cost for Moscow continues to climb. Ukraine’s General Staff says Russia suffered close to, get this, 43,000 battlefield casualties in the month of July alone. That’s an extraordinary price for a war that Putin started and once expected to win quickly.
Now the war is threatening to spill even further beyond Ukraine’s borders. On Sunday, a Spanish fighter jet operating on behalf of NATO shot down a suspected Russian drone after it entered Romanian airspace. One miscalculation, one escalation, and this war could take on an entirely different dimension.
Meanwhile, the diplomatic off-ramp remains elusive. Moscow continues to demand terms that Kyiv rightly considers unacceptable, while both sides are increasing their long-range strikes.
So here’s the big question tonight: Is Vladimir Putin’s war beginning to boomerang? Because it’s very clear, folks, that the economic and logistical war is now reaching toward Moscow itself.
Joining me now to break all of this down is our good friend, Dr. Rod D. Martin. He’s the CEO of Martin Capital and creator of the Rod Martin Report. Rod, it is always great to see you.
President Trump’s view here has been what you’ve called, basically, Commerce Not Chaos. He’s trying to use economic levers to bring Russia to the table and end the war. Is it effective? Is this strategy thus far making some headway in terms of potentially ending this war?
Commerce Not Chaos: Russia’s Choice
Rod D. Martin: It is very effective, but with this great caveat: Donald Trump gives everybody the opportunity to have commerce. We can all get rich together. We can all have a better life together. Everything can be better. And if not, we’re going to give you the stick. That’s exactly what’s happening here.
Soon to be added to it are 3,350 of the new ERAM missiles that are going to start being shipped to Ukraine within about 60 days. It’s an extraordinary system, significantly better than what they’ve had up to now. And of course, the Ukrainians are doing wonders for themselves with their drones.
Now, that’s a two-edged sword, because eventually there is nothing high-tech about what Ukraine is doing with drones. The Russians can imitate that if they choose to. What’s interesting is that they haven’t yet. For whatever reason, I would predict that before the end of the year, that’s going to change. Ukraine is going to be getting hurt more than it is currently from the air, as much as it is getting hurt now.
But the truth is, Putin believed that Ukraine was going to be a pushover, that they were going to lose this in three days. And here we are four and a half years later. Russia cannot move forward. Russia is not winning by any stretch of the imagination. It does not meaningfully control that much more territory than it did in the first two months of the war. In some areas, it has much, much less.
And here’s the crucial thing: Ukraine has now successfully taken 58 percent of Russia’s oil-refining and transport capacity offline. Most of that is never coming back. It’s just never going to come back unless the United States goes in and rebuilds it, which, as things stand, there is absolutely no chance of that.
So if Putin, or his oligarchs, reach a point where they decide, “You know what? Commerce sounds a little better than this chaos after all,” well, sure, we can come to a peace. We can absolutely get to a point that is not going to make everybody happy. That’s not going to happen. But happy enough.
You don’t negotiate with your friends. You negotiate with your enemies. That’s how you make peace. We can get there.
But if they want to continue down this path, Ukraine is on track to remove Russia from the board as a major oil-exporting power within the next six to 12 months. And they’re not going to be able to come back from it. Putin is destroying his country with this war.
Erick Stakelbeck: Wow, Rod, a stunning miscalculation on the part of Vladimir Putin. And the casualties: over one million in the past four and a half years since he launched this war. Hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers killed, many more injured. It’s just a meat grinder, as many have called it.
Putin got himself into this. Can he get himself out of it? And who is propping him up? Who is helping to sustain Vladimir Putin? We’re talking China, North Korea, and Iran.
China’s Predatory Embrace
Erick Stakelbeck: Putin, despite all his losses and, again, the severe miscalculation we mentioned, is still going. Part of that is support from China, North Korea, even perhaps tens of thousands of North Korean troops on the battlefield right now fighting alongside Russia, with more reportedly planned to come, and of course Iran’s regime supplying drones.
Can you talk a bit more about how this unholy alliance has helped prop up Putin’s war machine?
Rod D. Martin: The North Koreans help. They aren’t enough, but they are able to produce quite a lot of artillery rounds and other things that help take the pressure off Russian industry. That has been a benefit to Putin.
On the other hand, you look at China, and that’s a completely different situation. China’s embrace is entirely predatory. The Russians are forced to buy what they are able to buy from China, primarily in gold and yuan. They are draining Russia’s gold reserves. They are draining Russia’s foreign-currency reserves and just putting it in a worse and worse position.
They’re also obviously the chief purchaser of Russian oil at this point, but they’re taking it at an extremely steep discount. These are not the actions of a friend.
Can the Chinese help them? Sure. Are they? To a degree. But honestly, Putin is in a bind here, because the longer this goes on, the more China’s neocolonial ambitions in Siberia and the Russian Far East metastasize.
Erick Stakelbeck: Predatory is the key word, as you mentioned. But what’s the endgame here for Vladimir Putin? If this doesn’t go his way, could he find himself in jeopardy, with his head on the chopping block as Russia’s leader?
Rod D. Martin: That’s exactly the problem, and that’s why we probably didn’t have a peace deal two years ago. Putin is at least in the game as long as this war continues.
At some point, his oligarchs might be done with him anyway, but he feels like he’s in the game. He’s got a fighting chance. And of course, that’s true. The longer a war goes on, the more the odds change one way or another.
The problem is that at some point he can’t sustain it. Back in the fall, the Ukrainians had taken out a third of Russian oil capacity. Now, like I said, it’s almost two-thirds. It’s just getting worse.
And you’re actually taking the battle to the Russian civilian population in a way that they were promised they would never experience at the outset of all this. At some point, you reach a point where somebody has got to cry uncle. It might be the people backing Putin. It might be Putin himself.
And that’s where Commerce Not Chaos comes in. Donald Trump has a plan for how to make this all work for everybody in a way that gives everybody at least some of what they want. That deal can be done at some point. But Putin has so far decided that it isn’t this point, and he just keeps dragging it out. That isn’t working for him. We’ll see where it goes from here.
Rebuilding American Sea Power
Erick Stakelbeck: Back to communist China, Rod. President Trump just put 14 new nuclear submarines under contract, a massive deal worth more than $76 billion: five Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarines and nine Virginia-class attack submarines. He also ordered plans for the first new public Navy yard in more than 80 years.
It’s a big development as China is building up its Navy. You’ve called this potentially the best defense news of the year, but also very late. Unpack this a bit more.
Rod D. Martin: It absolutely is. We have let American shipbuilding atrophy to such a point that there hardly even is such a thing. We simply can’t keep up with our own pre-Trump demands.
The law says that we’re supposed to be launching two Virginia-class attack submarines per year. We’re actually launching 1.2. We can’t keep up with what we have set as our own legislated target.
But now we’re also going to supply Virginia-class boats to Australia. So how is that going to work? We actually need to be able to produce 2.33 when we’re producing 1.2.
Ditto for the Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarines. We’re retiring the Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines at an accelerating rate. That’s where most of America’s nuclear deterrent is fielded, on those subs. They are hitting the end of their life cycle. You can’t actually extend it. So you’ve got to build these Columbia-class boats as quickly as possible.
What does what the President just did mean? It means that we actually start having enough shipyard capacity to do these things. We are paying the manufacturers enough money that they can expand their production lines, hire more skilled people, train people who may not be as skilled but get them up and running, so that we actually recreate a proper naval shipbuilding industry in this country.
And of course, that fifth public shipyard that you mentioned: private shipyards build the fleet; public shipyards maintain it. We do not have enough of either.
Erick Stakelbeck: It could be a boon to the economy, with so many benefits, obviously, and most of all to our national security.
China right now: Would you say this is the largest military buildup by a nation since World War II, including its nuclear buildup?
Golden Dome and the Nuclear Balance
Rod D. Martin: Unquestionably. It dwarfs everything. The nuclear buildup is especially scary because China has tripled its number of nuclear weapons in just a very short number of years. It’s on track to double that again by 2030 or 2031. That is greatly destabilizing.
Deterrence works because we know about how many weapons the Russians have. We know about how many weapons the Americans have. You counterbalance that.
You add a third party here that could conceivably gang up on you with the Russians, and it puts you into an incredible arms race if something doesn’t happen, either a new treaty or Trump’s Golden Dome.
But Congress needs to quit dragging its feet on Golden Dome. We have to obsolete these weapons. We’re not going to be able to work this out through a treaty. It’s just not going to happen.
A New Anti-Iran Bloc?
Erick Stakelbeck: We’ve covered the largest land war in Europe since World War II. We’ve covered the rise of China. Now we’re going to head to the world’s most volatile and strategic region: the Middle East.
Rod, a major new alliance is taking shape there, one that could potentially alter the balance of power across the region. You’ve got Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and nuclear-armed Pakistan. They’ve entered into a collective-defense pact. It’s obviously raising some big questions about Iran, Israel, and American interests. What’s your take on this?
Rod D. Martin: At least in the near term, this is a net positive. Certainly, there are all kinds of ways this could go horribly awry at some point in the future, although I honestly wouldn’t give it that great a life expectancy.
I think it probably lasts about as long as CENTO or the United Arab Republic did, which was like the lifespan of a fruit fly. So I’m not that concerned about it in the long term.
In the short term, just look at a map. You’ve got Pakistan on Iran’s eastern border. You’ve got Saudi Arabia right across the Persian Gulf from Iran. You’ve got Turkey in the northwest, bordering Iran. And two of those three countries have been attacked by Iran.
Never mind that they’re sitting out this war. Never mind that they’re not attacking Iran. Iran is nevertheless attacking them, less Turkey than Saudi Arabia, and not at all Pakistan.
But Pakistan is a little sick and tired, honestly, of the Iranians supporting the Taliban, who are actually conducting a low-level war inside Pakistan as we speak.
So you look at all this, and it’s pretty clearly a defensive alliance aimed at our number-one current conflict. That’s a net positive for the United States.
Erick Stakelbeck: Turkey, obviously, has the second-largest military in NATO. Pakistan is a nuclear power, and the Saudis have their economic and oil might. So it’s a very interesting alliance, no doubt.
And by the way, as you know, it’s akin to NATO in that if one is attacked, supposedly the others will defend their partner. We’ll see if that happens, because Iran and the Houthis continue to target the Saudis as we speak.
Iran, Hormuz, and the Gulf of America
Erick Stakelbeck: Speaking of Iran, President Trump said the other day, yes, oil and gas prices are up. Not as severely as many thought before this war started, but he said it’s worth it to weaken, and hopefully just destroy, the world’s number-one state sponsor of terror, the Iranian regime, before it can acquire the bomb.
Donald Trump (recorded clip): So I just say this: For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have a country. Really, it’s the number-one state sponsor of terror in the world. We don’t want to have them have a nuclear weapon.
So remember that when you have to pay a little bit more. You’re at four dollars. It’s okay. I mean, I’ll never apologize. I did the right thing.
Erick Stakelbeck: Rod, he did do the right thing. He did what his seven predecessors failed to do and finally confronted this evil regime in Tehran.
I think he makes a great point about oil and gas prices. It’s not pleasant, of course, but is this what’s necessary to prevent an insane, apocalyptic, jihadist regime from acquiring the bomb?
Rod D. Martin: First, you’re exactly right. And of course it is. Of course it needed to be done. And of course it needed to be done a long time ago, before Iran got to the point where it could become the armament, the direction, and the funding source for every armed conflict in the Middle East, bar none.
It doesn’t really matter where you look. If you’re talking about the Houthis in Yemen, if you’re talking about Hezbollah tearing up Lebanon now for pretty much 50 years, if you’re talking about the Gaza war, you pick a war and Iran is openly behind it.
Until you solve that problem, until you chop the head off that snake, peace in the Middle East is impossible, even in the short run, and American troops are bogged down there forever and ever, amen.
The President’s aim here, as in every theater, is to create local defensive structures that make it possible for America not to have to do all the lifting, not to always have to provide boots on the ground.
Then, if you really have a crisis, let’s say Putin invaded Poland or China invaded Taiwan, we wouldn’t be bogged down somewhere. We could respond with decisive force immediately wherever that’s needed. That’s a vastly superior approach.
But the other thing that gets missed is that the net result of this conflict is going to be not only a dramatic reduction in the price of oil, not merely a reduction in the price back to February, but a reduction to something from decades ago.
The Iranian threat to Hormuz has been a $10 to $20 risk premium in the price of oil for the last 40 years. That’s going to go away.
It’s going to go away in two respects. First, by removing Iran’s ability to threaten the Strait. Second, with the plethora of pipelines that are getting constructed, the Gulf states are going to be able to ship something like 70 percent of the oil that used to go through the Strait of Hormuz by pipeline to other seas that Iran can’t reach. That’s an extraordinary development.
But the bigger thing, of course, is that the whole world is coming to the Gulf of America to buy oil and liquefied natural gas, LNG. That is a game changer.
We are shifting the center of gravity in global energy from Russia and the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of America. And that means an insane number of American jobs, investment, and prosperous futures.
The Midterm Math
Erick Stakelbeck: President Trump is playing the long game. He said, “Rod, I’m patient. I have all the time in the world with Iran. I’m taking my time.”
The midterms are coming up in November. The economy, I believe, is about to boom, and you’ve written a bunch about this. What’s your outlook as you have communists and Islamists on the Democrat side? How are you feeling about the midterms at this still relatively early stage?
Rod D. Martin: Pretty bullish. Historically, of course, the party in the White House loses the election. That’s just part of it, and I think Trump factored that in from before he took office again.
However, the truth is, the Democrats would have to pick up two-thirds of the competitive House races to be able to eke out a very slim majority. I don’t see any math where they’re going to pick up the Senate.
So we’re probably going to have at least an upset, in part, compared to what the pundits are claiming. And if the President ends up in control of both houses of Congress, he’s going to romp and stomp for his last two years.
Erick Stakelbeck: No doubt. It’s going to be very interesting. We’re getting there, and Rod, you’re following it every step of the way. Thanks for your great breakdown, as always.
Follow him on X and across social media, and check out the Rod Martin Report. Rod, God bless. Keep up the great work. We’ll see you again soon.
Erick’s Final Thoughts
Erick Stakelbeck: As we wrap up here, we did a great around-the-world journey and breakdown with our good friend Rod D. Martin. It’s a crazy world, needless to say, from Russia and China to the Middle East and beyond.
Here’s the good news. The Gospel of John, chapter 14, verse 27: “Peace I leave with you,” Jesus said. “My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. So do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid.”
That’s the key. God is on the throne. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. So if you feel a little faint as you follow all this crazy news, remember that He will never leave you or forsake you.
More great stuff to come here on Stakelbeck Tonight. Until then, God bless you. We'll see you soon.
