GLOBAL OVERVIEW: CHANGE & CONFLICT

Yesterday was the 80th anniversary of the end of WW2 in Western Europe, the 9th May the end of the war in Eastern Europe. In August in will be then end of the war in the Far East, from Burma (Myanmar) to Japan, China to the Philippines, Sakhalin to Bali.

The world in that 80 years went from statue worshiping Marxist-Leninist tyranny, turned into a personality cult under one of the most evil men who ever lived, Stalin. He and subsequent Soviet tyranny and the potential for global thermonuclear war, to the collapse of one of the two superpowers. Its re-emergence as a second rate version of its past glories, having turned to fascism, while lauding the defeat of it 80 years past, because not one good thing has it achieved since. That the defeat of German Nazism 80 years ago, is still hailed because it is the country’s only lasting achievement, tells you a great deal about Russia.

AMERICA

Meanwhile the other Superpower, America, has slowly dwindled away, its political system driven to near extinction by the literal dishonorable actions of greedy politicians across seven decades. From Roy Cohn and his critical support of Senator McCarthy in the 1950’s to Roy Cohn’s mentee Donald Trump, President for an extraordinary and almost unbelievable second time in 2025.

Then Vice-President Nixon in the 1950’s whose vanity, criminality and paranoia were a mere lightweight dress rehearsal for the present administration, eventually took the nation to what seemed like the depths of depravity in 1974 as the Watergate saga broke American’s belief in the infaliabiity of the Constitution and the Republic on which it stands. As Alexander Humiliation once said,

“The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion”

Perhaps more pertinent is Benjamin Franklin’s quote,

“A republic, if you can keep it,”

Post Watergate, Presidents and their administrations have repeatedly pushed the boundaries – some more than others. Reagan and his campaign to beat Carter in 1979, the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980’s. Clinton’s public immorality turned his presidency into a witch hunt to bolster the Republicans and their fake religious morality. The Supreme Court deciding who won an election in 2000 was another constitutional disaster that should never have happened. George Bush allowing his Vice-President Dick Cheney too much power, who then conspired with Justice Alito, and then SC clerk Brett Kavanaugh on policies to expand presidential authority – the later now a Supreme Court Justice himself. The Tea Party that looks meek by today’s standards, wrecking much of Obama’s pretty much of a failure presidency, when it came to international relations and red lines.

All of it relentless, dishonorable and specifically designed to undermine the guard rails of democracy for personal advantage. And then Trump. We couldn’t believe the first time, after a four years pause we certainly are going to know it this time. The world economy is crashing, oil prices diving, American democracy being deliberately ignored or run roughshod over, rule by decree, ignorant people in powerful places ruling against science, evidence and entirely by conspiracy theory.

America as it was 80 years ago is done. It has ceased to exist in a little under four months. Trust, friendship, alliances are broken, friendships of decades and more dumped over board. No amount of work, no attempt at rebuilding what was, by any future president can get back what Trump has destroyed – but to be fair it was already in sharp decline. Biden’s prevarication and fear of aiding Ukraine to the maximum was always a visible symptom of increasing weakness. It was a challenge America failed to rise to.

In the past few weeks the weakness of United States military and political power has been clearly demonstrated.

The utter failure to get Russia to the negotiating table and talk seriously about ending the war on Ukraine is a catastrophically dire blow to American prestige and diplomatic power. Its amateurish approach, dealing with some of the wiliest and most cunning negotiators on the planet, who frankly saw the Americans as not even worth the effort of real engagement, has been a disaster for the US on the global stage. Putin’s completely uncompromising approach tells you exactly what they really think.

Ukraine outmaneuvered the Americans completely, turning the disastrous February meeting in the White House around to the point where President Zelensky has fully exposed Putin as the aggressor and war monger and the Americans are slowly coming round to the fact he was right all along. Helped by senior Church leaders visiting Ukraine, one of whom, a Trump advisor, has changed course 180 degrees.

The number of countries and people saying ‘NO’ to Trump, from Mark Carney in Canada to Denmark and Greenland, Senator Tom Tillis, and a host of others. Trump’s plummeting popularity and approval ratings, they’re all starting to hit home.

Militarily the United States played a tough game against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. For one, I think they have long failed to understand that North Yemen and its people are not the same as the South Yemenis. The Houthis are in essence a country, not just a rebel group sponsored by Iran. North and South Yemen were not united for years, until May 22 1990. It was a failure from the start. The south dominated the north and Sa’na and Aden argued for years over which should be the capital, largely along tribal lines. The Houthis were not seen as legal government by the international community but they won the fighting despite heavy Saudi bombings and destruction. The UAE has effectively stolen the strategically vital Island of Socotra from them for a military base.

The Houthis, attacked on all sides by everyone went to the one country that would help them because it likes to upset the world order – Iran. Nobody understood the depths of the Iranian investment into arming the Houthis. The missiles, drones, heavy weapons, anti-air systems, command bunkers, underground shelters and storage sites. The Houthis, triggered by Israel’s initially justified, but by now vastly over the top aggression in Gaza, that’s gone way beyond self defence to near genocide, started to attack international shipping of any nation supporting Israel. Western and even Chinese and Japanese navies started to take part.

Trump, wanting to demonstrate to Iran that he meant business, dispatched two carrier battle groups to the Arabian and Red Sea areas off the Horn of Africa to engage the Houthis. Egypt was also quietly on board because they make billions a year from Suez Canal transits and these had collapsed because of Houthi actions.

The fact is US carriers and their support fleets are way out of sync in terms of deployability and maintenance. Operating times away from home are repeatedly stretched to well beyond reasonable, and the entire force of 11 carriers is struggling to keep up with demand for their use. That includes their crews and their pilots.

The Houthis may not have hit anything – American technology has managed to avoid that disaster so far – but it’s been very close. It was a high speed avoidance maneuver being undertaken by the CVN-75 USS Harry S Truman, that caused one of its F-18 Hornet’s to drag its tractor backwards and out over the hanger deck lift, plunging into the sea. Two days ago one of the F-18’s snagged but didn’t get stopped by the landing cable, possibly because it was too loose (according to some accounts, a maintenance calibration issue, TBC), resulting in the F-18 plunging over the side as its crew ejected. This comes on top of a recent collision in the Med with a civilian ship and the CO losing his job.

Now accidents happen, fair enough. But they don’t happen much in a well funded well maintained and with an unfatigued crew on an American carrier. They have been pushed to breaking point and this has been warned about for years – repeatedly the Navy and observers have said this day would come. And now it’s here. And it may not seem like a big deal, but I promise you this is a sign, a sign of decline, a sign of weakness and China, Iran and Russia are watching.

American power is based on the invisible psychological effect of invincibility and only a fool would dare take it on. The Houthis did. They scored by accident, and despite the massive B-2 and F-18 raids on 800 targets they’re still there, still firing missiles at Israel, still intend on firing missiles at Israel, and to ice the cake they and the Americans have a verbally agreed ceasefire in place. Yes the Houthis are massively degraded, but they haven’t gone anywhere. Iran may have cut off support for now, but when the carriers go away and the B-2’s leave Diego Garcia for home, give it a year or so and they’ll be back. Even as I type the Houthis are declaring they defeated America – and in many ways it could be – and will be – seen that they did.

They say you should pick your targets very carefully. Trump did not. He thought it would be easy – he watched much of the action live. It wasn’t easy. He thought military power applied against cave dwelling rebels would solve the problem. They were far more sophisticated than that – showing by their repeated shooting down of at least nine Reaper drones that they could counter even the best American surveillance. The US was made to look like it took a massive hammer to crack a pistachio nut and the pistachio got up and walked off with its middle finger in the air. Again China, Russia, Iran were all watching.

The ignorant Trump regime has made blunder after blunder and not even begun to realize what hey have really done. You know, I know and probably most of the rest of the aware population of this planet knows. We just have to live with and manage the consequences.

RUSSIA

Today’s military parade was a masterful Soviet era style theatrical event designed to project an image that is less than skin deep. It was nothing but smoke and mirrors.

The self-declared ceasefire: the expected non-existent joke we expected. Other than President Lula of Brazil who should know better, Xi of China, whose troops took part in the parade to pad it out, was the only meaningful guest. He has clearly shown us all where his sympathies lie. Don’t expect China to change its spots – it knows what its doing. The fact Robert Fico and Vucic of Serbia were there says more about them than the countries they represent. One is so popular his followers tried to kill him, and the other is inundated by demonstrations about his corruption. The other guests were those who feel they have to follow the party line for now, but they know what this is. Maduro of course has no other friends and its the FSB whose advice has kept him in power, along with clandestine military aid.

German intelligence several weeks ago noted that at least 300 new build tanks had been retained for some reason. Now we know they were for the parade. Along with some Grads and a couple of Russia’s latest Bohdana-like SPG’s with some freshly painted old SP Howitzers, empty S-400 carriers, and a couple of mobile ICBM launchers, a low level fly past. The goose-stepping military parade that only fascists seem to enjoy (its hell on the legs and back, many years ago we tried it and couldn’t stop laughing, it felt so monumentally stupid), and that was it. Flags, uniforms, several tons of medals and sashes, and it was over. Putin nestled under what was apparently a bomb-proof canopy. Meanwhile 400 anti aircraft batteries had been placed around Moscow so that nothing could get through. Reporters were using land lines because the internet was shut down and GPS and mobile phone signals jammed or switched off.

The point of it? To express normality in a time that is most certainly not ‘normal’. To get past that humiliating 2023 parade when just one old T-34 from WW2 could be found. That was not happening again. It was a massive smoke and mirrors operation, a vast disinformation campaign to make Russia look strong and capable at a time when it has never been so weak. Its economy is crumbling, largely because of the Trump régime’s global wrecking ball on the world economy depressing the oil price.

The days, just six weeks ago, when Russian state TV and the gloating Olga Skabeeva were delighting in Trump’s saying that Crimea is going to stay Russian, are over. Now they ask, “who asked the Americans anyway?” They go on now about ‘the demands of the Russian People and State for victory’. It always fascinates me that in Russia the People and the State are such different concepts. In the west the State and the people are largely seen as one. In Russia the State is the superior of the two.

Yet the wheels are coming off the economy, and nobody seems to want to say anything even though they all know it. Fiscal crisis is now a visible concrete wall on the freeway of doom. The driver has his foot on the accelerator and the brakes don’t work, while looking out of the rear window. What you choose not to see isn’t there.

Russia is stuck fighting hard against Ukraine’s Steel Porcupine. For every land gain there’s an equal loss, Russian troops are dying at a near constant rate of around 1,200 a day, 20% above their replacement rate. Ukraine’s new Corps structure seem to be paying huge dividends in coordinated defence and attack.

The Ukrainians hit the only supplier of fiber-optic cable in all of Russia for a second time and gutted it just two days ago. A blow so profound its gone around Russian frontline and commentator channels at warp speed. They know what this means, because it was the only answer Russia had to Ukrainian drone dominance – which is growing on the battlefield at a rate Russia seems stunned by. When infantry are the primary weapons and drones so effective against them no matter how they deploy, it has Russian soldiers bothered. Meanwhile Ukraine is increasing its own fiber-optic drone production at lighting pace to counter Russian jamming.

The front lines have suddenly become increasingly harsher and more intense, the defence quantitively and qualitatively improved. Russia is having a hard time. Its only answer is terror weapons against civilians.

Diplomatically Russia has overplayed its hand. It doesn’t yet see it. President Zelensky lured Putin into a trap that exposed Putin’s real intentions even to the dimwitted American regime. Putin’s arrogance, in what even the man who probably wishes he hadn’t converted to Catholicism (the new Pope directly criticized him only a couple of weeks ago for his behavior towards immigrants and deportees), Veep Vance, called Russian demands ‘too much’. Russia hasn’t seen what it expected, happen. They were convinced the anti-Ukraine rhetoric of the US election would result in a permanent cutting off of Starlink, ammunition supplies, and intelligence sharing. That has not happened. It looks like it probably won’t now. Zelensky has passed the watered down and actually beneficial to Ukraine minerals deal, through parliament virtually unopposed. So far America is keeping its side of the bargain. Old F-16’s have been seen being shipped out for parts and 155mm artillery arrives every day from the UAE or the US on American 747F’s.

Yet Putin has now made his choice. It’s quite irrevocable, and he knows it. The war will go on until he gets what he wants. He never will. There is a doom on his house and no amount of smoke and mirrors can cover it up. It’s a risk he has to take. Like Goebbels and his Total War speech at the Berlin Sportspalast in 1943, it’s too little too late. Only now has Putin realized there is no going back. His belief in the last resort as his savior, his bloated arsenal of nuclear weapons, they won’t get him out of this. Russia will destroy itself from within just as it did in 1917. Hold onto you seats because its going to get rough when it happens and we won’t see it until it does, just when you least expect it.

CHANGE

The world has irrevocably changed. Europe has found its voice and it has a say. It is rearming and re-evaluating what it needs to do in possibly the greatest opportunity to pull itself and Europe+ into a new position as a new power in this multi-polar world.

WAR

We may well be in World War 3 and not even see it. The last global war stopped and started – it was far from universally continuous. Poland went down first in 1939, and then over the winter Russia invaded Finland and lost even as it ‘won’. While declarations of war flew around, nothing much really happened until April 1940, then it was Denmark & Norway. In May, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland. In June Italy joined. But it was almost another year before the Germans struck in the Balkans in April-May and late June 1941 when Germany lost the war by attacking Russia. It wasn’t until December 1941 that Japan attacked the US and for some lunatic reason Hitler unnecessarily declared war on the US. It took two and a quarter years to go truly global. The Axis reached their maximum geographic reach in October 1942. By then Germany had already lost the war but didn’t know it. Japan had the tide turned against it in June 1942, and again had no idea. From then it was all downhill for them both.

Today we have war in Ukraine, war on the Arabian peninsula, war in the Middle East, a dreadful and often unreported war in Sudan largely caused by Russia, a devastating civil war in Myanmar, Taiwan under permanent threat, North Koreans fighting in Europe with Russia, under their governments instruction. Pakistan and India are on the brink of major conflict. China constantly presses its luck with Vietnam and the Philippines, Iran and Israel are never far from another round of attacks. And Russia, even though it’s next to incapable at present of doing anything, appears ready and willing to press even NATO members. How history will look at this period only time will tell.

One thing though, is certain; The rapid and shocking decline of America under Trump has created a vacuum and someone else will step in to the places the old American Empire once held high. Europe can fulfill its own destiny. It’s the rest of the world that is the predatory states likely victim. if America will not fight for or with them, stand up for freedom and democracy and the rules based order, they will strike.

The Analyst

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