Fossil Fuels And The Bulk Freight Market (And More)

Executive Summary

Fossil fuels account for 40% of ocean freight, 51% of train freight, and 56% of barge freight. 

New technologies in renewable energy, nuclear energy, electric vehicles, batteries, and heat pumps, could dramatically reduce the importance of fossil fuels in the global economy, eliminating the need for this bulk freight. 

This shift away from fossil fuels would also greatly reduce pollution, slow or stop climate change, improve workplace and transportation safety, strengthen democracy in the world's most authoritarian states and far-right domestic politics, and reduce economic vulnerability and military logistics vulnerability to unrest and military activity in countries that produce oil and gas.

How Are Fossil Fuels Used? What Substitutes Are Available?

The predominant use of coal is to generate electricity and its market share of electricity generation is plummeting, mostly to renewables like solar power and wind power, and to a lesser extent to tidal, geothermal, hydropower, and biofuels like corn based ethanol and biodiesel made mostly from restaurant waste fats. Nuclear power provides a significant share of non-fossil fuel electricity and has been pretty stagnant, neither growing nor shrinking in market share much for decades, although new advances are poised to tweak up nuclear power use in some niche applications. A very small share of coal is used for making steel, for purifying water, and in other industrial applications. Coal can also be industrially transformed into a liquid petroleum fuel substitute or a natural gas substitute when oil and gas prices are high enough for this to make economic sense, which is rarely and too briefly to justify building the infrastructure to do it.

The increasing affordability of renewables combined with environmental regulation are making coal obsolete for electrical power generation which is its predominant use.

The predominant use of oil is as a transportation fuel and its market share of vehicle fuel types is also steadily losing ground to electric vehicles (and to a tiny extent, other non-fossil fuel powered transportation modes). 

Oil is used for electricity generation in Alaska, in Hawaii (which has fairly low per capita electricity demand), during disasters and at construction sites, for heating oils (mostly in the Northeast U.S.), for fertilizers, for lubricants, and to make plastics. But all of these non-transportation fuel uses collectively are a much smaller share of oil consumption than as transportation fuels. 

There are good alternatives to oil to generate electricity in Alaska and Hawaii. Better batteries can limit the need to fossil fuel electricity generation in natural  disasters, in remote locations, and at construction sites. Organic farming and eliminate the need for petroleum based fertilizers (and pesticides). Non-plastic materials can be substituted for plastics in many cases. Heating oils can be replaced by natural gas furnaces or heat pumps (which are powered by electricity).

Natural gas (and other gas state hydrocarbons like propane) is predominantly used for space heating and water heating and as a greener alternative for generating electricity on demand at power plants compared to coal or oil. But very small shares of natural gas use are also used for cooking, ornamental lighting, and as a niche transportation fuel (especially for United Parcel Service trucks, and to a lesser extent, other fleet vehicles). Electrically powered heat pumps, electrically powered evaporative coolers, electric cooking appliances, electric water heaters, and electric vehicles are the main alternatives to direct natural gas use, and renewables (paired with utility scale batteries) and nuclear power are the main alternatives to natural gas for electricity generation.

Fossil Fuels And The Bulk Freight Market

 

The 40% breaks down as roughy 7-8% of total global ocean-going deadweight tonnage and vessel count (there are about 770 active LNG carriers in the world, which are specialized ships necessary to carry liquid natural gas) and about 32%-33% of total global ocean-going deadweight tonnage for coal and oil.[1] Natural gas is primarily transported on intra-continental pipelines, however, with some last mile transportation by truck, rather than by ships, trains or barges.

The numbers are similar for freight transported by freight train (51% of train freight is coal and oil) and over rivers and lakes by barges (56% of barge freight is coal and oil).

As of December 2009: "About 49% of rail freight is coal and another 2% is oil. About 10% consists of grain and grain products. Wood and paper account for 4%. About 10% of loads are non-petroleum chemicals. Stones, gravel, sand, clay and glass account for about 10% Most of the rest (13%) consists of other food products, metals and metal products, motor vehicles, waste and scrap materials."

As of September 2024: "In 2007, coal was the primary commodity moved by barge, accounting for 29% of all tonnages. Petroleum was the second largest commodity group in 2007, accounting for 27% of all tonnages. Crude materials, such as forest products, sand, gravel, ores, scrap, and salt, were the third largest commodity group in 2007, accounting for 18% of all tonnages. Food and farm products were the fourth largest commodity group in 2007, accounting for 12% of all tonnages."

Oil and gas firms accounted for 13.3% of U.S. capital expenditures in 2015, but only about 0.13% of U.S. employment (about 180,000 people); while in the same year the coal industry accounted for 0.16% of U.S. capital expenditures and 0.05% of U.S. employment (about 68,000 people) (and the coal industry has significantly contracted by more than 20% since 2015). By comparison, the retail trade industry accounts for 5.2% of U.S. capital expenditures in 2015 but 11.3% of U.S. employment. Wal-Mart alone employs about six times as many people as the entire oil and gas and coal industries combined. The U.S. oil and gas industry is important to Wall Street, but accounts for less than one in 500 U.S. jobs.

Fossil Fuels and Democracy

The share of an economy that comes from oil, gas, and coal is a good indicator of how authoritarian and far-right wing its politics are likely to be. The absence of production of these fuels in an economy, or reduced reliance of fossil fuel production, favors more democratic and more liberal government.

All of the world's remaining absolute monarchies (as opposed to merely symbolic constitutional monarchies) are in economies dominated by oil and gas revenues. Just one of the 36 countries with oil revenues as more than 2% or more of GDP has a healthy democracy (the outlier is Norway at #28 with 4.8% of its GDP from oil revenues is Norway). Norway's relatively healthy non-fossil fuel economy and democracy is in part due to the fact that it developed its oil and gas resources (mostly in the North Sea) fairly late in the history of these industries.

Among U.S. states ranked by fossil fuel production per capita, the only blue state in the top 8, is New Mexico (where it is 21% of GDP and which at #4 has all sorts of demographic and economic characteristics typical of red states, but votes blue because New Mexico has large Hispanic and Native American populations who are not welcome in the Republican party). Purple Pennsylvania at #9 and Colorado at #10 (each at about 5-6% of per capita GDP) are the only other blue states in the top 18 by fossil fuel production per capita. California at #19 has only $323 per capital of fossil fuel production (about 0.5% of per  capita GDP) and 17 states have no appreciable fossil fuel production per capita.

Environmental and Climate Harm

Coal and oil are probably the biggest drivers of air pollution and global climate change. They are also responsible for the workplace and transportation accidents associated with their extraction, delivery, and use. They are a very significant source of water pollution (including ground water pollution) and a major source of toxic and radioactive waste (coal has somewhat more than trace levels of radioactive elements in it). And, the extraction process destroys otherwise pristine open space and agricultural land, with coal being particularly damaging.

National Military and Economic Security

Reliance on fossil fuels, especially oil in the U.S., and both oil and natural gas in Europe, is also a major national security and economic stability risk, that subjecting economies that consume them to supply interruptions and risks caused by global military unrest associated with the authoritarian regimes that oil production based economies are so prone to be (e.g. unrest in the Middle East, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Russia). 

The Ukraine War has illustrated how vulnerable Russia has been to attacks on its oil and gas industry, which is not easy to defend, how dependent modern militaries are logistically on oil, and how dependent Europe and other world economies are on Russian oil and gas.

Reduced reliance of ocean shipping of fossil fuels also makes naval warfare and military control of seaways at choke points like the Red Sea, the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, the Bight of Benin, the Panama Canal, the Strait of Malacca, the Bosporus Strait, the Strait of Gibraltar, and the Baltic Sea much less important and much less tempting for states that want to flex their military power and pirates.

References

[1] According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in an entry about Liquefied natural gas made on June 21, 2024, and a report by Fortune Business Insights, Report ID: FBI103940 updated August 17, 2026 entitled "LNG Bunkering Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By End-User (Tanker Fleet, Bulk and General Cargo, Offshore Support Vessels and Ferries, Other) and regional Forecast, 2026-2034.

The Trump Executive Order Renaming Lake Ontario Is Illegal

Trump has claimed that he can rename Lake Ontario unilaterally with an Executive Order. Google Maps is obeying it. But, of course, like so many of his other Executive Orders, this one is illegal because it contradicts a binding treaty with Canada.

Indirect And Non-Obvious Effects Of The Iran War

The U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran (the NYT recaps the first week here) will have some indirect and non-obvious impacts, some of which mirror those from the Ukraine War.

* Iran is the sole significant outside military supplier for Russia in the Ukraine War (supplying drones) apart from North Korea which has supplied artillery rounds and some old school military equipment (and even about 10,000 troops) all of which have been subpar in quality and not very useful. The attacks on Iran are likely to divert existing supplies of drones to domestic military use from exports to Russia for use in counterstrikes, and are likely to somewhat degrade Iran's military production capabilities.

* Iran's counterattacks and continued war-like footing have driven up global oil prices dramatically, have had direct supply effects on most of Asia, and have damaged the oil production infrastructure in many Middle Eastern oil producing nations (including Saudi Arabia) which will reduce the capacity of these countries to produce oil in the short to medium term.

* This oil price shock, like many more before it, makes electric vehicles and public transportation more attractive to policy-makers and consumers alike, all over the world, potentially resulting in long-term systemic reduction in demand for oil.

* This mirrors the indirect effect of the Ukraine War in causing Europe to rush to find long term alternatives to oil and natural gas, resulting in wider adoption of EV vehicles, renewable energy sources for their power grids, and energy conservation measures. Again, this results in long-term systemic reductions in demand for oil and natural gas in one of the largest economically developed regions in the world.

* The Ukraine War also strengthened NATO, strengthened European cooperation, and caused re-militarization of European countries, especially those most at risk of attacks from Russia.

* Trump's inexplicable decision to temporarily ease sanctions on Russian oil sales to India, helps Russia in the Ukraine War despite the fact that Russia has used its intelligence resources to help target the U.S. and its allies for Iranian counterstrikes.

* Generally, an international war strengthens the regime attacks vis-a-vis external dissent (something that partially explains Russia's persistence in the Ukraine because the ongoing war there makes Putin more able to crush dissent against him at home). The protests of the Iranian people against its regime may suffer because of this effect. While the U.S. assassinated the Ayatollah, Iran's supreme leader, and many of the likely successors, the successor chosen for this reason is probably more likely to be a hardliner than the person who might have been chosen if the Ayatollah (who was 86 years old and close to 87 when he was killed by a U.S. strike) had died of natural causes as was likely in the near future.

* It seems unlikely that Iran will experience regime change, either in favor of a more democratic regime (Iran's democracy was actually more robust than a lot of regimes in the Middle East), or a monarchist restoration of the Shah. Pre-attack, this had been conceivable because of huge protests against the too conservative Shiite religious regime's social policies, despite the fact that Iran is actually quite religiously and ethnically diverse. Air strikes and missiles are rarely sufficient to secure regime change.

* The war probably delays steps that could be positive for the residents of Gaza.

* The war probably depletes military equipment supplies of Iran, and to a lesser extent, the U.S. and Israel, weakening the affected countries' capacity to fight further wars.

* In much the same way, the Ukraine War has dramatically depleted Russia's military resources (despite half the national budget in Russia being spent on the military and interest on loans to support it).

* The strikes in Iran are very likely to weaken the Republican Party's MAGA coalition, since MAGA campaigned on ending foreign wars of choice and then has repeatedly sought out those wars in Trump's second term, striking Venezuela, embargoing Cuba, striking Iran, and renewing a "drug war" in Mexico, Ecuador, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, which doesn't seem very calculated to actually do anything about drug abuse and drug related crime in the U.S. (as well as threatening Canada and Greenland). This coalition has already been beaten up in special elections and survey results and has a very thin majority (especially in the U.S. House).

* The inflation caused by rising oil prices, weakens support for Trump and the Republicans and strengthens Democrats chances in the 2026 midterm elections, which are just seven months away.

* The Iran War hasn't been particularly effective at diverting attention from the Epstein files which graphically reveal a coalition of child trafficking, corrupt, and Russian influenced officials in senior levels of politics, business, and academia, with Trump at the center of all of it as a highly culpable serial child rapist.

* The Venezuela invasion, by the way, seems inconclusive and certainly doesn't seem to be having much of an oil supply impact.

Trump's Many Wars

Trump has declared wars on small boats in international waters in the Caribbean and the Pacific, claiming that they are drug boats, without proof, claiming a right to kill the people on them, contrary to international law.

Trump invaded Venezuela and seized its leader.

Trump has involved U.S. military forces in striking a Mexican cartel chief, leading to a bloodbath there.

Trump has unilaterally made strikes on Iran.

Trump has now deployed the U.S. military in Ecuador.

Trump is trying to impose an oil embargo on Cuba.

Trump deployed the National Guard to peaceful American cities.

Trump has deployed ICE as his private secret police to lawlessly terrorize American cities with scant regard to what they are actually legally authorized to do.

Trump has deployed U.S. forces to interdict Russia's shadow fleet of oil tankers trying to evade sanctions arising out of the Ukraine War. The Ukraine war itself is ongoing and Trump and blown hot and cold on it, prolonging the war by giving Putin hope.

Trump has threatened, but not yet struck, Greenland, Canada, and Panama.

And, while only metaphorical, Trump has declared trade wars on the entire world.

In most of these cases, Trump hasn't had even a whisper of Congressional authorization or legal authorization to act. The uses of force (and the tariffs) have violated domestic and international law. 

The Economic Foundation Of A Liberal Geopolitics And Political Economy

The liberal answer to the despotism of Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and other petrostates is ultimately pretty straightforward: use technology to make oil and other fossil fuels, which are also damaging our environment and driving climate change, irrelevant, replacing this with energy obtained from cleaner and decentralized renewable energy and vehicles that run on electricity.

Authoritarianism thrives in economies where the key factor of production is ownership of resources, whether that's farm land, gold, sliver, coal, or oil.

In contrast, in a commercial economy, where the most important factor of production is not just labor, but intelligent, voluntary work, you need to spread out economic resources to induce those willing, smart economic contributions from many people. The decentralization of wealth and power that flows from that favors a more open, democratic society, since the funds to run a state must be obtained through taxation of the many secured with their democratic permission, and not just ownership of those resources.

Commercial economies need to be market based. But they don't need to be truly "capitalist" in the Marxist sense, and indeed, ideally aren't. In a truly capitalist economy, in this sense, capital (i.e. raw wealth) is they key factor of production and ownership of it, while more amorphous than wealth based upon ownership of raw resources, can lead to similar effects.

If owning the factory or equipment becomes as important as owning land used to be in medieval and early modern Europe, you get a society that may look like a commercial economy, but is just as controlled by oligarchs as the economies that came before it. In the extreme of a capitalist society, financial wealth can dominate and replace land or oil as the concentrated factor of production that facilitates an economy based upon ownership of the key factor of production by a few.

To be clear, this doesn't mean that we should resort to Marxism's flawed "labor theory of value." What matters is results, not effort. Treating goods and services made less efficiently as more valuable than the same goods and services made efficiently is just dumb. But ideally, know how and efficiency that maximize the value of labor relative to the value of ownership of property is the goal.

This approach, like every approach has winners and losers, which somewhat align with modern political identities. Right wing politics are favored on one hand, by people who want to increase the importance of ownership of property as a key factor of production, and on the other hand, by people who are only capable of providing inefficient labor, who don't benefit from a system that rewards widespread and diverse forms of efficient labor.

Another threat to the political structure of a decentralized commercial economy is intellectual property. When it is too strong, as it is in our economy, ownership of intellectual property prevents innovation rather than encouraging it, and concentrates wealth in whomever owns a right to royalties from it.

The fundamental project of those seeking a healthier political economy in the West is to undermine the importance of merely owning wealth and intellectual property.

In the case of intellectual property, we've kept that at bay so far, by making it easy to copy and having lots of opportunities to innovate and make older intellectual property grow obsolete, although laws weakening intellectual property rights would help.

In the case of finance, we've tried to create financial institutions that make it possible to funnel access access to resources to people who have good ideas, while lowering the returns to ownership with low interest rates and modest returns to ownership of equity. But tax laws that favor unearned income over earned income have helped undermine this, as has the weakening of estate and inheritance and gift taxation that facilitates the transfer of wealth to dumb money.

The Tide Is Turning In Ukraine's Favor

The Ukraine War seems to have reached a turning point. Ukrainian attacks on the Russian oil and gas infrastructure, and on coal and natural gas fired electrical power plants, often deep inside Russia, are having an impact that ordinary Russian citizens can no longer ignore. And, when Russia can not longer supply oil and gas to Western Europe, European resolve to take a firm stand against Russia strengthens.

In a few cases, strikes deep in Russia have been carried out by Ukrainian special forces acting in concert with domestic minority nationalist groups, raising the specter of a Russian civil war, or at least a renewed insurgency at a time when it's military is stretched thin to beyond a breaking point.

Russia is almost completely out of heavy armored vehicles and has dramatically reduced artillery resources. Russia is still suffering about 30,000 casualties a month, a rate at which it can just barely replace the soldiers it's losing with green conscripts.

Russia's provocation of NATO countries from Poland to Hungary to Denmark is driving these countries in Europe to vigorously prepare for war and take more aggressive measures against it.

Russia is deploying huge numbers of drones, missiles, and glide bombs to Ukraine at unsustainable levels, but many of these are intercepted before they can do harm, and those that done usually result in modest Ukrainian civilian casualties that incited outrage, but have little military effect and have not broken Ukraine's spirit. And, those attacks are unsustainable because Russia's capacity to procure new drones and missiles, and the replace its military equipment losses is far lower than that of Ukraine and its Western allies.

And, while Trump's America has been a feckless ally to Ukraine, it also hasn't turned out to be the solid supporter of Russia that Putin had hoped to receive.

It isn't over, but the tide has turned definitively in favor of Ukraine.

Moving Space Force HQ From Colorado To Alabama Is Stupid

Trump is about to renew his efforts to move the headquarters of the Space Force, a fifth military service that he created, from Colorado (where the headquarters of the part of the Air Force bureaucracy that was transferred to the separate Space Force service was located before he created the Space Force), to Alabama. He tried to do so during his first term, but the moved got bogged down in Department of Defense red tape, and the Department of Defense reversed that decision during the Biden Administration. 

UPDATE:

President Trump said one of the main considerations for moving Space Command out of Colorado Springs is because Colorado voters largely vote by mail. 

“I will say I want to thank Colorado,” Trump said. “The problem I have with Colorado… they do mail-in voting, they went to all mail-in voting, so they have automatically crooked elections." 

Trump has long criticized voting by mail, and has cited the practice as a major reason he lost the 2020 election to Biden though he has not provided evidence of fraud emanating from mail-in ballots." . . . 

The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce estimates that Space Command supports nearly 1,400 jobs and has a $1 billion impact on the Colorado Springs economy. Colorado has a significant Space Force presence, hosting half the bases with its major operations, including Peterson as well as Schriever Space Force Base in the Colorado Springs area and Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora. Nationally, the branch has more than 14,000 military and civilian members, who are called Guardians. 

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser on Tuesday said his office was prepared to challenge in court Trump’s decision to move the command, though he did not elaborate the legal rationale for a lawsuit. . . . 

Huntsville, nicknamed Rocket City, has long been home to Redstone and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. The Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command is also located in Huntsville, which drew its nickname because of its role in building the first rockets for the U.S. space program.

This is almost certainly not a legitimate reason for executive branch action under the Administrative Procedure Act. It is also an outrageously false claim.

Colorado Pols has more details.

END UPDATE

This is very on brand for Trump. He is making a call that places partisan politics above what is best for national security and wastes federal dollars.

Alabama is less attractive than Colorado to the civilian employees and contractors (who have a choice unlike active duty service members), so it won't attract the same quality work force. And, if one was going to move it away from Colorado one could have justified an HQ in Florida or Texas, which are also GOP strongholds, but like Colorado and Washington State, actually have a space industry (but see the material in the update above about Huntsville). Charitably, the best that can be said for it is that it provides economic development assistance to an underdeveloped part of the U.S.A. that supports him politically. Less charitably, it can be seen as a political payoff to Senator Tommy Tuberville who was getting in the way of Trump's Defense Department agenda. Less charitably still, it is a way for Trump to try to take action solely attributable to him that will become part of a military service's legacy once the bad decisions that went into that choice are long forgotten.

Tearing down old infrastructure to move it somewhere else is also just wasteful, while providing no benefits to national security. It is will probably require a billion or so dollars of unnecessary defense spending.

Of course, creating the "Space Force" was a bone headed idea in the first place. It undermines interservice cooperation, and honestly, it would have been better to be truly conservative and roll the Air Force back into the Army, rather than further dividing the Air Force. There might be a time when a Space Force makes sense, but that time is far in future.

Space Force's military role remains ill-defined and it remains a work in progress that is currently creating more confusion rather than a stronger U.S. military. Do we really need a new Space Force academy? Do we really need Space Force reserves? How is it doing anything that the Air Force did better? How many people are even in the Space Force? According to Google AI it apparently has 9,400 active duty "guardians" and about 4,600 civilians, making it far smaller than even the Coast Guard.

Trump's other wasteful symbolic military acts

Trump's other symbolic military initiatives are similarly dubious. His military birthday parade in the District of Columbia on June 14, that the Army aptly converted to a boring historical display from the third-world dictatorship show of force that he wanted in an act of malicious compliance, it was a wasteful and expensive flop.

The idea he has floated to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War (as it was called during and before World War II), were also wastes of money, but at least are basically harmless. Indeed, the calling it the Department of War is also more honest.

Trump's intent to reassign Confederate names to U.S. military bases is fundamentally endorsing treason and insurrection and is patently un-American.

Trump's inappropriate domestic uses of the military

Trump's deployment of military force, mostly but not entirely, national guard troops, on the other hand, in addition to being a waste of money, are grossly improper, manufactured crises that threaten democracy, undermine federalism, are inappropriate for immigration enforcement, and are illegal.

The Courts rejected his efforts to criminalize illegal immigration by calling a large swath of the border a military base, and have rejected his characterization of illegal immigration as an "invasion" of the United States for constitutional purposes. Courts have also held that deportation flights he had the military make in violation of court orders were illegal.

Courts have shut down his military deployments to Los Angeles. As the New York Times explains:

A federal judge in California said President Trump broke the law by deploying roughly 5,000 Marines and National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June in response to immigration protests. The judge said on Tuesday that Mr. Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Defense Department had violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits using the military to enforce domestic law. The judge barred them from using the troops for any law-enforcement purpose, but put the order on hold for 10 days. The administration is expected to appeal. . . . 

The ruling was the latest in a series of judicial battles over claims of expansive unilateral powers by the administration. Mr. Trump and administration officials have deported people without due process, imposed widespread and unpopular tariffs and rolled back energy regulations, citing wartime and emergency powers that have been disputed in federal court. 

The president also declared crime in Washington, D.C., to be an emergency in order to send federal troops there in August, although crime rates in the nation’s capital have actually been falling and local officials said the deployment was not needed. Since then, Mr. Trump has publicly mused about sending the National Guard into other Democratic-led cities. Federal law gives the White House more latitude to conduct local law enforcement in the District of Columbia than in the states. . . .

The ruling places strict limits on the what the troops can do and applies only in California, although the judge noted that Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth “have stated their intention” to use Guard troops as a “national police force with the president as its chief.” Gov. Gavin Newsom of California praised the decision, saying Mr. Trump’s efforts were “illegal, authoritarian, and must be stopped in every courtroom across this country.”

Other bad defense department decisions.

These aren't the only bad defense department decisions he's made. He's banned books at the military academies (eventually rescinding all but a few of those bans). 

He wiped all mention of women and minorities who contributed to the U.S. military on government websites (another decision he has mostly backed down from in the face of court action and bad P.R.). 

He's systemically fired or removed from command women and minorities whom he has called "DEI hires" while putting in place less qualified individuals chosen for political loyalty. 

He's baselessly fired transgender troops contrary to their civil rights and denied them their legitimate benefits for being laid off and having served with distinction.

He's purged the ranks of generals and admirals and national intelligence officials to replace them with political loyalists. Trump's major appointments in the defense and national intelligence sectors have involved woefully unqualified people who have made major public blunders.

His openly revenge oriented revocations of security clearances and security details for various officials has been disgraceful.

The mixed bag of Trump's military deployments and threats abroad.

Trump's deployment of U.S. forces have been a mixed bag at best.

Trump wasn't wrong to continue Biden's policy of militarily engaging the Iranian backed Houthi rebels in Yemen who have been using advanced anti-ship missiles from Iran to interrupt maritime commerce in acts of piracy that they claim are in support of Gaza but really have nothing to do with it. But then, he just lost interest and ended U.S. involvement.

Trump wasn't wrong to provide some extra military support to Israel's raids on Iran to thwart its nuclear capabilities, although the B-2 bomber strikes he made were less effective than might have been hoped. And, of course, this is a problem of his own making created when he pulled the U.S. out of President Obama's deal with Iran to end its nuclear weapons program.

Trump, in his first term, set up Biden for failure, and the Afghan government installed by the U.S. and its allies for collapse, by negotiating with the Taliban for a U.S. withdrawal that left the Afghan government out of the loop and left Biden holding the bag when he took office, just a month or so before the scheduled pull out date. And, in his second term, Trump has broken faith with Afghan citizens who served U.S. forces in Afghanistan at great risk to their own lives by trying to revoke the immigration protections that the Biden Administration and his own administration in his first term provided to them.

Trump has been indecisive, has wrecked our alliances, has taken absurd and counterfactual positions, and has played into Russia's hand with respect to the Ukraine War, even though with immense bipartisan political pressure from Congress and from the Defense Department, he hasn't entirely abandoned it.

Trump's utter abandonment of Africa, ending U.S. Aid in a way that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and will kill millions, planning to close all U.S. embassies there, and imposing tariffs upon it, has basically ceded the entire continent to China.

Trump has been less firm than he might have been in the Philippines-China clashes in the South China Sea caused by Chinese Coast Guard harassment of Filipino military and civilian shipping in places that international law has declared to be international waters.

Trump's response to the situation in Israel with Gaza has ranged from rudderless to absurd with his call to vacate Gaza and turn it into a Trump owned beach resort. By floating the proposal without even consulting his advisors, he has undermined U.S. credibility on the issue.

Trump's deployment of naval forces towards Venezuela seems to be an attempt to manufacture a war. His early threats to invade Greenland and Panama and Mexico, contrary to the sovereignty of a NATO member, to treaty obligations, and to international law, and to annex Canada, have likewise been toddler level moves that have undermined U.S. credibility in foreign affairs and turned us into a global menace.

The mixed bag of Trump's procurement decisions

Trump's military procurement decisions have also been a mixed bag.

The cancelation of the M10 Booker light tank (that the Army refused to call a tank) was a good move. Cancelling the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle for the Army (one of the best procurement decisions that the Army and Marine Corps have made for ages), while keeping the Army's buy of the obviously bad Infantry Squad Vehicle that ignores all of the lessons the Army learned in Iraq and Afghanistan was a very bad move.

Cancelling the Army's successor to the M113 was mostly a good move, but leaves the Army without a next generation medical transport and field hospital vehicle, even though other parts of that buy were unwise. Progress on an Osprey-like tilt wing successor to the Blackhawk helicopter in the Army is positive. Upgrading Army small arms makes sense.

The decision to boost purchases of the B-21 Raider and the F-47 Air Force fighter (to replace the F-35A) aren't horrible decisions, nor is the decision to continue the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (a.k.a. Loyal Wingman drone) program. Looking at ways to use cargo aircraft as bombers or missile launching platforms also makes sense. This administration's continued failure to recognize the need to have a close air support aircraft (shared with past administrations), however, even if the A-10 is just too old, wasn't wise. Trump's absurd attempt to play aerospace engineer and claim that the F-47 really needs twin engines, however, is more toddler level governance.

A focus on improving U.S. air defenses in a program known as the Golden Dome (playing on Israel's Iron Dome), on ramping up U.S. drone production, and on rushing to get drone defense resources fielded aren't wrong. Developing hypersonic missiles also makes sense. 

Developing new anti-ship tactical nuclear missiles, however, is a bad call and doesn't meet a real military need since existing anti-ship missiles are more than adequate to sink any ship in existence.

The decision to fund development of Elon Musk's SpaceX Rocket Cargo program which is technologically challenging, doesn't have a proven track record of quality control, and doesn't meet an urgent need, is less wise. This contract is just political payback.

It is honestly still hard to tell, more than seven months into the administration, what it's naval policy is. The Navy is appropriately looking at a major increase in unmanned ships and submarines, and at containerized anti-ship missiles for ships that wouldn't ordinarily have any missiles. Is the successor to the F-35C on or off? Is the Constellation class frigate on or off? Where is the Littoral Combat Ship program? Do we really need more old model Arleigh Burke destroyers? Does spending big bucks on maintaining a large scale amphibious attack capability really make sense?

Trump has talked big about using the U.S. military against cartels in Latin America, but the Department of Defense has apparently done nothing to prepare for this historically law enforcement and Coast Guard mission.

A Best Case Scenario Future For Russia

This post isn't a prediction. It isn't even a likely possibility. It is just barely within the realm of possibility. But it doesn't hurt to dream big now and then, because progress towards even part of this goal would be great.

What would be a best case scenario for the future of Russia?

Ukrainian Territory Surrendered

* Crimea is returned to Ukraine, demilitarized and granted a high degree autonomy within Ukraine. 

* The historically ethnically Russian eastern provinces which Russia controls or partially controls would receive similar treatment.

* Ukrainians relocated to Russia would be repatriated.

* International peace keeping forces would provide security guarantees for a limited time period in formerly Russian controlled territory.

Demilitarization

* Russia surrenders its nuclear weapons (which are destroyed with the radioactive elements repurposed for nuclear power). It's nuclear power plants are operated under the close supervision of a beefed up International Atomic Energy Agency.

* Russia's long range missiles and military drones are destroyed.

* Russia's long range bomber aircraft are destroyed.

* Russia's remaining air force is scaled back and its most advanced fighters are destroyed.

* Russia's navy is profoundly scaled back to little more than a coast guard.

* Russia's military industry is basically shuttered, closing its tank factories, it artillery shell factories, its naval ship yards, its military aircraft factories, and so on.

* Russian military spending and military forces would be limited in a manner similar to post-WWII Germany and Japan.

International Relations

* Russia is replaced on the U.N. Security Council by India and Pakistan.

* Any Russian foreign military bases are closed and ceded to the county where they are located.

* Any treaties between Russia and former Soviet Republics are dissolved and open to renegotiation on a clean slate.

* The autocrats ruling Belarus are replaced with a democratically elected regime in elections conducted under foreign monitoring.

Balkanization

* Part of the strategy is that reform and democratization is easier for smaller unitary countries than it is for large federal countries. It is also harder to concentrate military might and economic power in many small countries than it is in one big country. Rump Russia would still be the largest successor state but would still be significantly smaller and more decentralized.

* All of Russia's autonomous regions (everything but the red and pink and blue areas on the map below, i.e. all territories in orange, yellow or green) are granted independence and a right of free passage across all territory that was formerly part of Russia. About 25 million people (out of a total of about 144 million people) live in republics and autonomous regions that would gain independence, which also make up a huge share of Russia's territory.

Via Reddit.

* The Asian and Arctic Russian Oblasts and Krai would be allowed to vote (collectively) on whether to become a separate country of "Western Russia" or not.

* Kaliningrad Oblast, with an area of 5,840 square miles (a little bigger than Connecticut or Puerto Rico or Prince Edward Island in Canada), is demilitarized and its one million people (mostly Russian speaking and ethnically Russian) are granted independence. It is offered membership in the European Free Trade Association (but not the European Union) and encouraged to convert military industries to civilian ones. 

* The loss of Kaliningrad together with the independent republics and autonomous regions, this would leave about 118 million people in rump Russia, and even less if Western and Arctic Russia voted to form their own country.

Regime Change

* Putin is deposed and the current political regime is dissolved and its political officials are removed from office with many disqualified from holding public office.

* A new Russian constitution is adopted reflecting its loss of territory and forbidding any future annexation of territory. It has a very weak Presidency and shifts most power over domestic policy, and almost all lower level courts, to oblast and krai and independent city governments from the national government.

Democratization, accountability, and reconciliation:

* A campaign of democratic education for a decade or so would counter propaganda from the authoritarian era, and firmly reestablish democratic freedoms. 

* Russia and all of its successor states become signatories of the European Declaration of Human Rights (administered by the Council of Europe) and the International Criminal Court treaty. 

* War crimes committed by Russians since the fall of the Soviet Union are prosecuted.

* A commission investigates and discloses the true story of abuses during its authoritarian regime with inside information and the behind the scenes stories of its post-Soviet Wars are told (including all abuses and casualties).

Economic Reforms and Reparations

* Heavy taxes are imposed on Russia's oligarchs and strengthened antitrust laws would break up their economic power.

* Russia's oil and gas industry is transferred to an international corporation in which Ukraine and other victims of its aggression receive a 1/3rd share of the profits (further broken out by an international arbitrator) in lieu of other reparations.

Trump Cedes Africa To China

For better or for worse, the Trump administration's policy towards Africa is to completely withdraw from it: closing embassies, withdrawing any military presence there, withdrawing foreign aid, barring immigration, and discouraging trade with new tariffs. It isn't even seriously criticizing human rights violations there.

China is filling the vacuum that the U.S. departure is creating on all fronts.

I could source every point in this post from news stories. But I don't have the time for it right now (it might take a couple of hours), so this time, as an exception to my usual habit, I'm going to have to have you trust me that the points I'm making have solid backup that could be found and linked.

Time Is On Ukraine's Side

An article in the New Yorker entitled "What It Would Actually Take to End the War in Ukraine" gets it exactly backward with in subheading that says:

With Ukraine drained by more than three years of fighting, time is on the side of Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine has held out as long as it had because it has Western allies resupplying with good quality (although not state of the art) military equipment. So, Ukrainian military equipment losses can be replaced. And, in general, a defender can inflict many times as much damage on an invader as an invader can on a defender (as reflected in the two country's respective military losses to date). As long as Western Europe sees Ukraine's survival as something that is in their interest (and it is hard to imagine circumstances when they wouldn't), Ukraine will not run out of modern military weapons.

Ukraine also can't just voluntarily stop the war without losing their country, so their commitment to keep fighting is higher. 

Russia has much less capacity to resupply itself from its own factories, with only North Korea (whose arms and munitions are of substandard quality) and Iran (who has only supplied some narrow types of drones and is distracted by war with Israel) willing to sell it arms. Russia is in grave peril in a time frame of six to twelve months or so, of basically completely running out of almost all of its tanks (even museum relics from the 1950s and 1960s), artillery batteries, other armored ground vehicles, guided missiles, and advanced drones over the next year. And, Russia is already is using artillery shells and less advanced drones as quickly as it can make or import them, because it has no inventories of them left. Russia is also, slowly but surely, seeing its supply of warplanes eroded, and has suffered some modest losses to its navy as well with its Black Sea fleet basically emasculated and forced to retreat to safety.

For Russia, this war is a luxury that it can stop at any time with no consequences except sunk costs and shame (and with the benefits that would come from relaxed sanctions and an end to military strikes on its roads, bridges, railroads, and oil and gas infrastructure). Furthermore, since Russia's war is driven almost entirely by the personal ambitions of Vladimir Putin, if he dies or is incapacitated or loses power, Russia's impetus for the war would end promptly, while Ukraine would continue its fight without missing a beat, even if President Zelensky was killed.

In a war of attrition, Russia not only loses, but ceases to become a threat to any other country in the short to medium term.

Our Dismal Moment

The left is fighting for all it is worth to keep democracy alive in America, to create a world where justice prevails, where villains aren't rewarded, where decency and empathy guide policy, where science and reason are heard, and where people doing good are empowered through cooperative effort.

The right has less noble goal and tries to achieve them with lies, cheating, and violence. There was a time when there were intellectually defensible conservative policy arguments that the right tried to advance. But that has died with MAGA. Trump is a post-policy politician who is doing is best to run the federal government, and the United States of America into the ground without regard to any legitimate arguments for doing so.

Why the political right in the United States, which is suffering and will suffer further from Trump's agenda, doesn't wake up and turn on Trump is hard to understand.

Trump, a life long con man, rapist, and pedophile, and more recently, a felon, an insurrectionist and hard core fascist (like his father), is unraveling further into his most basic psychopathic tendencies as, at age 79, his dementia, probably the same Lewy body dementia that afflicted his father Fred in his 70s, gets steadily worse. The average 79 year old man in the U.S. has a life expectancy of 9-10 years and Trump is in below average health. The average person with Lewy body dementia dies 7-8 years after symptoms start, and they started a while ago in Trump. He may or may not manage to stay alive for the next three and a half years. He is the most unpopular President in U.S. history (rivaled only by himself in his previous term).

He's already done irreparable harm. A defeat in the 2026 midterm elections could mitigate the amount of further harm he can do, and would make it harder for him to carry out a coup ending democracy for good.

Once in place, dictatorial regimes can persist for generations. Look at North Korea.

Democrats really, really want to resolve the crisis facing the United States while coloring within the lines, rather than slicing the Gordian knot. MAGA has no such scruples.

Today, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will be having a summit meeting in Alaska, mostly about ongoing Ukraine War. In a better world, treachery would leave both men, each one of the greatest forces for evil in the entire world in their generation, dead. This is highly unlikely to happen, however. We'll see what does.

The night is pretty dark, although there is plenty of room for it to get darker. I'd like to think that hope can survive it, but I'm not sure.

Russia Fears Further Breakups

Contrary to Russian fears, Western governments aren't secretly plotting to dismember it, even though they would welcome this outcome if it happened. But, the fact that it is repeatedly talking about this possibility, in what seems to be a case of projection, suggests that the bonds that hold Russia together are much more fragile than they seem. This concern is in addition to the economic crisis in Russia which is starting to take hold due to sanctions and which Western governments are trying to create. 

On the other hand, rather than projection, this may simply be a boogie man that the Russian leadership is trying to create to unify the country against a common enemy so it can secure greater control over its people who are dissatisfied with the economy and poor results in the war with Ukraine.

Messaging from the Kremlin over the last year reveals deep concerns about Russia’s internal unity and stability.

Russian officials are sounding increasingly alarmed and even paranoid in their public statements about the future of their country. Most notably, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed in September of last year that Western governments have assembled a coalition of at least fifty countries in order to dismember Russia.

What may appear to be political paranoia or an attempt to mobilize citizens behind the regime is not necessarily based on imagined enemies. It reveals the official realization that numerous negative trends are converging on Russia and that the current regime, and even the state itself, may be running out of time.

Three overarching fears preoccupy Russian officialdom: losing the war, economic collapse, and state fracture. The prospect of all three occurring soon looms on the horizon. Regarding war losses, in June, Russia’s Ambassador to the UK, Andrey Kelin, inadvertently confirmed the hundreds of thousands of casualties sustained by Russian forces during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The coming injection of US and NATO weapons and more onerous US sanctions on Russian oil exports have led to the usual desperate threats of nuclear retaliation, including a direct warning from former President Dmitry Medvedev to President Trump that Moscow possessed Soviet-era nuclear strike capabilities.

The fear of defeat and international isolation is palpable at the highest levels of government. As if preparing Russia for defeat, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has acknowledged that Russia is fighting the war against Ukraine without any Western allies, a situation the country has never faced before in its history. He warned that Russia must rely on itself and cannot afford weakness or laxity.

Defeat in war or a prolonged conflict that drains the economy will increase pressure on the regime and can turn large sectors of society against the Kremlin. Russia has historical experiences of lost wars or disruptive economic conditions leading to state fracture, most notably during the collapse of the empire during World War I and the demise of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War.

Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Kremlin-controlled Russia Today network, admitted that Russian authorities are increasingly concerned that the war in Ukraine could turn ordinary, apolitical citizens against the government—not only through battlefield losses, but through disruptions to their everyday lives and economic living standards. Officials are also fearful that returning veterans will turn to gangsterism and organized crime.

The First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration, Sergei Kiriyenko, told local administrators in July that the Kremlin considers returning veterans to be “the main factor of political and social risks.” . . . .

Regime collapse and state fracture are undoubtedly the Kremlin’s biggest fears. Officials have tried to perform a difficult balancing act—on the one hand, claiming that Russia is indestructible while simultaneously warning that it faces a serious danger of fragmentation. The alarm signals are intended to mobilize and unite society behind the government. Still, they also reveal a fear that Russian history may repeat itself, and the authorities may be powerless to prevent it.

A major target of Moscow’s attacks is the specter of state-wide separatism. Since April 2024, the Putin regime has intensified its campaign against allegedly expanding separatist movements. The Ministry of Justice demanded that an “international social movement for the destruction of the multinational unity and territorial integrity of Russia”—defined as the “Anti-Russian Separatist Movement” and all of its structural divisions—be recognized as an extremist organization, even though such an organization did not exist.

The proposal has enabled the authorities to persecute national and regionalist movements more aggressively and to target any citizen it considers a threat. The repression of regionalists, including those simply calling for political and economic decentralization, indicates how fearful the Kremlin has become of any potential dissent, even among ethnic Russians.

In January 2025, the FSB designated 172 ethnic and religious groups associated with the international Free Nations of Post-Russia as “terrorist organizations” because the Forum called for Russia’s decolonization and the independence of captive nations. They included movements such as Asians of Russia, Free Buryatia, Free Yakutiya, New Tyva, the League of Free Nations, the Association of Indigenous Peoples of the Russian Federation, Free Idel-Ural, Free Bashkortostan, the Congress of Peoples of the North Caucasus, the All-Tatar Social Center, and the Karelian National Movement.

To reinforce its repression of any independent anti-regime activities, Moscow also prepared to fine people searching for banned content online, evidently fearful that news about the separatist groups would attract a wider public. Paradoxically, the Kremlin’s attacks have backfired, as leaders of various groups often based abroad or online now consider themselves part of a major movement that Moscow views as a direct threat to the country’s integrity and existence.

The rising fear in the Kremlin over Russia’s decolonization was reflected in the draft of its new nationality policy strategy released in July 2025. It devoted significant attention to preserving and developing the culture of ethnic Russians as the sole “state-forming” nation and countering foreign threats to Russia’s stability, including the impact of outside efforts to reach various ethnic groups inside Russia.

From The National Interest. 

Observations Related To The Latest Conflict With Iran

In a nutshell, the most recent military conflict involving Iran, Israel, and the U.S. can be summed up as follows:

* Iran is getting close to developing nuclear weapons.

* Iran wants to remove Israel from the face of the Earth and that is why it is developing nuclear weapons.

* Iran has not very long ago launched missile and drone attacks on Israel.

* The Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank in Israel, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, are all Iranian proxy forces. Iran was deeply involved in facilitating the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

* Iran has had periodic military engagements with U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf.

* Israel carried out a major airstrike on Iran, mostly using F-35I stealth fighters with conformal fuel tanks to boost their range allowing them strike and return without aerial refueling, targeting Iran's nuclear program and key individuals in that program. Many of these targets were successfully struck and/or killed. But, one of Iran's most important nuclear facilities is in a very deep bunker in Iran.

* The U.S. used seven B-2 stealth bombers and with two "bunker buster" bombs each, to strike this very deep bunker with Iranian nuclear facilities (although probably only setting it back a few months), and used one of these and other carrier based aircraft to attack two other Iranian bases.

* It isn't clear that the U.S. has non-nuclear strike capabilities sufficient to truly destroy Iran's most secure nuclear program resources in its deepest bunker sufficiently to set its nuclear program back all that far.

* Before attacking Iran, the U.S. threatened it and evacuated personnel and ships from a U.S. naval base in Bahrain, and moved more carrier groups into the region.

* Iran counterattacked Israel and a U.S. military base in Qatar. Interceptor missiles apparently stopped all of the strikes on Qatar, and 80%-90% of the strikes on Israel, although this was not entirely successful and there was Israeli casualties. These defenses may not be sustainable, since Israel is running very low on key missile defense interceptor missiles that are part of its "Iron Dome" anti-missile and anti-drone defenses. But Iran's supply of effect long range missiles and armed drones and strike aircraft that can reach Israel is also not unlimited, and it has no quick source from which it can resupply itself (and Russia does not appear to want to get involved in this fight).

* Iran has been a major supplier of armed drones to Russia for it use in the Ukraine War.

* Iran has regularly interfered with shipping in the Persian Gulf and has a fairly impressive naval made up mostly of submarines and small missile boats, although it is building a drone carrier and has shipping container ballistic missiles as well.

* Many decades of sanctions have caused Iran to develop its own military industrial complex.

* Iran's government is officially under the supervision of a Shi'ite Islamic theocratic supreme leader since the Islamic revolution in 1979. But it has a democratic secular elected government, screened to remove candidates contrary to the regime or contrary to Shi'ite Islam, that has gradually been growing more powerful and more moderate. In part, this is because its economy is at least as dependent upon a diversified mercantile class as it is upon oil and gas exploitation (which is about 20% of its GDP) and agriculture.

* Iran is religiously diverse despite being a theocracy. It is home to many minority religions, that are tolerated, and its people are less religious in their daily lives and more secular leaning, than most countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and many other places in the Islamic world (like Pakistan and Afghanistan). Devout Shi'ite Muslims make up only a plurality of the population (about a third of the population) at most.

* Iran, not having the luxury of abundant oil wealth shared by a small population of citizens with real work done by temporary foreign laborers, like the Arab oil monarchies, has a substantial grass roots movement that wants fewer restrictions on women, more modernity, an identity that embraces its historical Persian roots rather than an exclusively Shi'ite Islamic national identity, more political freedom, and more freedom of speech. This said, there is wide grass roots opposition to and hate of Israel and the United States in Iran. In general, Shi'ite Muslims have been less backwards than Sunni Muslims in the Middle East. Iranians, and in particular, Iranian women, are also better educated than many Middle Eastern countries.

* But for its attacks and proxy attacks on Israel, its direct and indirect attacks on Persian Gulf and Red Sea commerce, its nuclear program, its military support for Russia, the sensible thing to do would be to allow Iran to percolate with its own internal conflicts and political developments without foreign interference. This would probably have led to considerable moderation and maybe even disestablishmentarianism, either politically or through a counterrevolution, sometime in the next five to twenty years. But, its violent foreign policy has made intervention more urgent.

* Israel was basically already at war with Iran and was entirely reasonable in taking action to prevent Iran from obtaining military capabilities that would be used to obliterate it.

* On the merits, U.S. military support for Israel in its strikes on Iran's nuclear capabilities was not unreasonable.

* The U.S. has, without really intending to do so, defanged Iran's main potential military opponents in Iraq and Afghanistan, through invasions of those countries, freeing up Iran's military resources to take on Israel and to interfere with Persian Gulf trade and to become an arms supplier to Russia.

* Neither the Israeli strikes nor the U.S. strikes appear to have done all that much to degrade Iran's air defenses, its air forces, its drone forces, its long range missile capabilities, its Persian Gulf navy, its anti-ship missiles, or the military industrial complex it uses to supply itself, Russia, the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah. But, if the U.S. and Israel are going to be attacking Iran anyway, those seem like sensible additional targets.

* A sustained ground invasion of Iran makes no military sense. There is no likely scenario in which the U.S. sends hundreds of thousand of U.S. group troops to Iran, possibly as part of a multi-national coalition like those in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or needs to new military draft. This a a conflict involving strikes with aircraft, missiles, and drones, and defenses against counterattacks by similar means and at sea, and in terror attacks (most likely not primarily on U.S. soil, and more like the U.S.S. Cole attack by al Qaeda on October 12, 2000 in Yemen, and Shi'ite militia attacks on U.S. forces in Syria and Jordan in the waning days of the Syrian civil war).

* It isn't at all obvious that regime change can be achieved in Iran without a ground invasion, or that killing key political and theocratic leaders in Iran would result in much of a change in Iranian policies. Indeed, attacks by Israel and the U.S. on Iran probably strengthen the regime against these common enemies in the short run. Iran has plenty of adequate potential successors to its current leaders who wouldn't seem much different in their policies towards Israel, the U.S., and maritime commerce.

* A claimed U.S. brokered cease fire hasn't really held at all, for even t twenty-four hours.

* The Israeli-U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear program wouldn't have been necessary if Trump hadn't ended an Obama negotiated deal with Iran related to its nuclear program in 2018.

* Both Israel's leadership and the U.S. leadership have reasons to divert attention from domestic affairs to this conflict. It does have a genuine solid military motive, but the timing may very well be politically motivated.

* It isn't clear that President Trump had the legal authority to strike Iran in support of Israel without Congressional authorization which was not sought or obtained. This strike is not within the scope of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), or any of the authorizations made in connection with the Iraq War.

* The MAGA right is divided on the desirability of this strike and it isn't clear that Trump could have promptly secured backing from Congress to make the strike if he'd asked it to do so.

* While a military strike directly on Iran from the U.S. no doubt does increase the likelihood of retaliation on the U.S. from Iran, the notion that we should be suspicious of Iranian-Americans, many of whom are medical professionals working in rural America, is very doubtful. There are probably not lots of Iranian "sleeper cells" in the U.S. who want to commit terrorist acts in the U.S.

* Political protests against Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is long standing on the American left, and has legitimate justification, particularly given an Israeli military response in Gaza to the October 7 attacks that, while understandable, particularly because Hamas continues to hold Israeli hostages and refused to surrender, has been overkill. Notably, however, the October 7 attacks had widespread support in Gaza long after the blowback it suffered from them became clear. The U.S. opposition to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is predominantly not anti-Semitic, and isn't even predominantly anti-Zionist. It is mostly a very general pro-human rights driven movement.

* The Israeli response to October 7 in Gaza has been so completely destroyed that the enclave that it can support only perhaps a third or a half as many people as it had before the attacks (see also here). While there have been tens of thousands of Gazan deaths so far there, the clock is ticking and there will soon be either many hundreds of thousands to millions of Gazan deaths from starvation, lack of water, and illness, or a mass exile of people who are currently in Gaza, which no Islamic countries are volunteering to sponsor.