I’d like to know the author's opinion on the level of warfare being waged against the USA by the Russian special services. These are the ones who taught at the universities where the KDS, the Taliban, Hezbollah, and ISIS all studied. In general, they invented all the current theory of sabotage, guerrilla warfare, and other 'active measures' sciences.
Furthermore, my father-in-law taught various 'fun things' to the locals in Yemen back in the late seventies. Most Yemeni 'commanders' had a Soviet or Russian military education, and the second (or rather, third) language in ISIS was Russian.
Of course, I believe in the superiority of North Korean and Iranian hackers, but still—both places lack a high-level school of programming. )))
I can't speak for Tom Del Beccaro, but I think he would agree with me that you're right: these threats are real and all too active. I think if I were sitting in the Kremlin right now, after Venezuela and Iran, I'd be wetting my pants. It's not that we'll bomb Russia directly or anything: it's that we can do pretty much anything we decide to do (except stupidly go occupy another country for 20 years) at will and without meaningful opposition (see Maduro).
Again, direct war with Russia (or China) is not at all our aim. However, Russia is in a shooting war it started and I've been writing here for more than a year on Trump's determination to bring that to a conclusion: carrot -- peace with prosperity -- or the stick. I've outlined very specific sticks, and you're seeing some of them in action now and some of them being shipped to Ukraine as fast as we can produce them. But the biggest threat to Russia is our depriving it of cash to conduct operations, and that's where the Shadow Fleet interdiction comes in: it's far more directed at Russia (and China) than at its seeming targets. This is one of the reasons the apparently India flip last week is so consequential.
There's no path forward for Russia. They need to negotiate a reasonable exit from their current situation (which can include some limited territorial concessions, however much we may dislike that), sanctions relief, and a huge investment package led by the United States. China won't help them and has actually been completely predatory toward them throughout this war, and both Iran and Venezuela show them to be a completely useless ally even in a fight. So my hope is we flip Russia in the way Trump has flipped India: not perfect, not necessarily permanent, but a real shift from the enemy column into ours for key purposes. And the more that develops -- the more we achieve what Clinton fumbled in the 90s -- the less we're likely to see 5GW from that direction and the more peace will be possible (I mean "more" in the sense of quantity: there is rarely any such thing as perfect peace in this life).
A most cogent and common sense analysis. And if I were the Trump administration, I’d recognize that the guy who placed his hand on the Koran while being sworn in as Mayor of New York, is perhaps the greatest threat to destroying Wall Street, and creating chaos in our banking system.
I don't think the President has missed that point. But I think he's also very aware that Mamdani is bringing about the rapid transfer of New York's leadership as a global financial capital to South Florida and Dallas, which advances all manner of useful aims. As in the destruction of Detroit, only New York's voters could have ever "achieved" such a thing. They'll learn the lesson, but probably too late.
We had to get in another middle-eastern war in this present moment for Iran aggressions that happened years ago? These arguments are not going to win over the Americans that voted for mass deportations, or the millennials and zoomers that can't afford a house or otherwise meaningfully participate in the current system. We are going to get cooked in the midterms...
/Again with the penguin joke/
I’d like to know the author's opinion on the level of warfare being waged against the USA by the Russian special services. These are the ones who taught at the universities where the KDS, the Taliban, Hezbollah, and ISIS all studied. In general, they invented all the current theory of sabotage, guerrilla warfare, and other 'active measures' sciences.
Furthermore, my father-in-law taught various 'fun things' to the locals in Yemen back in the late seventies. Most Yemeni 'commanders' had a Soviet or Russian military education, and the second (or rather, third) language in ISIS was Russian.
Of course, I believe in the superiority of North Korean and Iranian hackers, but still—both places lack a high-level school of programming. )))
I can't speak for Tom Del Beccaro, but I think he would agree with me that you're right: these threats are real and all too active. I think if I were sitting in the Kremlin right now, after Venezuela and Iran, I'd be wetting my pants. It's not that we'll bomb Russia directly or anything: it's that we can do pretty much anything we decide to do (except stupidly go occupy another country for 20 years) at will and without meaningful opposition (see Maduro).
Again, direct war with Russia (or China) is not at all our aim. However, Russia is in a shooting war it started and I've been writing here for more than a year on Trump's determination to bring that to a conclusion: carrot -- peace with prosperity -- or the stick. I've outlined very specific sticks, and you're seeing some of them in action now and some of them being shipped to Ukraine as fast as we can produce them. But the biggest threat to Russia is our depriving it of cash to conduct operations, and that's where the Shadow Fleet interdiction comes in: it's far more directed at Russia (and China) than at its seeming targets. This is one of the reasons the apparently India flip last week is so consequential.
There's no path forward for Russia. They need to negotiate a reasonable exit from their current situation (which can include some limited territorial concessions, however much we may dislike that), sanctions relief, and a huge investment package led by the United States. China won't help them and has actually been completely predatory toward them throughout this war, and both Iran and Venezuela show them to be a completely useless ally even in a fight. So my hope is we flip Russia in the way Trump has flipped India: not perfect, not necessarily permanent, but a real shift from the enemy column into ours for key purposes. And the more that develops -- the more we achieve what Clinton fumbled in the 90s -- the less we're likely to see 5GW from that direction and the more peace will be possible (I mean "more" in the sense of quantity: there is rarely any such thing as perfect peace in this life).
A most cogent and common sense analysis. And if I were the Trump administration, I’d recognize that the guy who placed his hand on the Koran while being sworn in as Mayor of New York, is perhaps the greatest threat to destroying Wall Street, and creating chaos in our banking system.
I don't think the President has missed that point. But I think he's also very aware that Mamdani is bringing about the rapid transfer of New York's leadership as a global financial capital to South Florida and Dallas, which advances all manner of useful aims. As in the destruction of Detroit, only New York's voters could have ever "achieved" such a thing. They'll learn the lesson, but probably too late.
We had to get in another middle-eastern war in this present moment for Iran aggressions that happened years ago? These arguments are not going to win over the Americans that voted for mass deportations, or the millennials and zoomers that can't afford a house or otherwise meaningfully participate in the current system. We are going to get cooked in the midterms...