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Trump Risks Another American ‘Forever War’

During his 2024 campaign the Felon promised there would be no more forever foreign wars. Like virtually everything else that comes out of his mouth - including his whining last night about elections -  this promise has proven to be a lie as the war of choice against Iran is shaping up to be a potential "forever war" and the Felon contemplates military action against Cuba.  Adding to the debacle is the reality that the Felon has never had a long term strategy in Iran. He merely thought he'd attack and Iran would capitulate and the war would be quickly over like his military adventure in Venezuela. The driving motivation? The Felon's hubris, delusions of grandeur and a need for distractions to redirect the media focus from the Epstein scandal. No plan, an unhinged Secretary of Defense and the alienation of allies all further compound the mess of the Felon's own creation.  Don't expect the Felon to accept responsibility for this disaster any time soon. A piece in the New York Times looks at how the Felon may be sliding America into a forever war of his own - a war that is almost universally opposed by a majority of Americans. Here are excerpts:

No one starts a war expecting it to last forever. Yet, since Vietnam, American presidents have repeatedly gotten into conflicts that seem like they could last forever, at least until the next president — or the one after that — decides that the expense and political pain are not worth it, declares victory and goes home.

On Iran, [the Felon] President Trump may have fallen into the same trap.

He campaigned for office vowing to end wars, not start them, and to never get involved in a forever war, let alone one in the Middle East. And yet he risks doing so in Iran, his critics say.

The war that Israel and the United States began with such force has alternated between moments of negotiation and military strikes. They have failed so far to reach Mr. Trump’s stated goals of regime change or ending Iran’s nuclear program, while the war has created a new, seemingly intractable problem, bottling up the Strait of Hormuz.

[A] frustrated Mr. Trump finds himself back at war, the cease-fire broken, the strait blocked. The memorandum of understanding he said “achieves everything we set out to accomplish” — despite wildly divergent interpretations of it — is in tatters after less than a month.

[S]aid Ali Vaez, Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. [said] Without a long-term strategy to produce a sustainable settlement, he said, there’s a risk of creating “the circumstances for a forever war.”

The idea of the “forever wars” began with 9/11 and the “global war on terror,” pulling the United States into long military engagements, with troops on the ground, in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Those conflicts, which began by toppling hostile regimes before turning into counterinsurgency campaigns, ended either inconclusively or in defeat after considerable expenditure and loss of life.

Powerful leaders with powerful militaries are prone to fall into “the short-war fallacy,” said Lawrence D. Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College, London, who last year wrote an article, “The Age of Forever Wars.” “They think they can win quickly and not suffer adverse consequences,” he said.

Like Mr. Trump in Iran and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Ukraine, “they fail to appreciate the limits of military power and so set objectives that can be achieved, if at all, only through prolonged struggle,” Mr. Freedman said.

And even the most sophisticated military forces are not enough, if there’s no strategy to turn battlefield superiority into lasting political and diplomatic success. Mr. Trump faces the added challenge of trying to win using only air and sea power, without politically unpalatable use of ground troops on Iranian soil.

The Persian Gulf war of 1991 was quick and succeeded in its aims, because President George H.W. Bush had a limited political objective — drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. That was a lesson lost on his son, President George W. Bush, in the second war against Iraq, which ended up enhancing Iran’s power in the region.

There is an argument, sometimes made by Mr. Trump himself, that he went to war in Iran to finally end what he considered a 47-year war between the United States and Iran, which began with the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979 and the taking of more than 60 American hostages.

Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Mr. Trump, urged by Israel, has also inserted himself in a parallel “forever war” — the one between Israel and Iran, which is being played out with Iran’s proxies in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Yemen.

[The Felon] seems to be doubling down, albeit with no clear path to a diplomatic settlement. And his commitment to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, while Iran insists on maintaining control, could mean a very long American military engagement, even with the help of allies.

Still, the Iran war is different, especially compared to Afghanistan and the second war against Iraq. In both of those wars, thousands of American troops were on the ground for long periods of time and ended up fighting militias and terrorists opposed to new governments propped up by the United States — not fighting a state like Iran.

And unlike the case in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, Iran can inflict economic pain on the United States by blocking access to the Strait of Hormuz, which gives Tehran more effective leverage and is a prime reason it will refuse to give up control.

There will be no return to the situation before the war, said Suzanne Maloney, director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. As in Iraq, American assumptions and misperceptions changed the balance of power in the region, she said, and now the days of the Strait of Hormuz fully free for transit are probably over.

There can be “a new normal,” she said, “but with a much higher American force posture in the region” given Iran’s ability to hit ships whenever it pleases.

But a negotiated end to the war in Iran still feels far away. Both sides have proven they can’t even stick to a minimal framework agreement that defers all the substantive issues to the future, Mr. Vaez said. If they can’t even do that, he added, “that could remove the last barrier between episodic confrontation and a forever war.”

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Trump’s Anti-Economic Growth Agenda

The Felon's favorite mantra is "make America great again" yet his policies and alienation of long time allies and demonization of immigrants looks more like the United Kingdom's Brexit which ten years later has left the UK both poorer and saddled with high prices than across the English Channel on the continent.  Worse yet, by slashing funding for research and development, showing contempt for universities (and knowledge in general), and holding open hostility to renewable energy sources, the Felon is likely guaranteeing that America falls behind economically., particularly compared to China. Indeed, one could almost believe the Felon is taking orders from Vladimir Putin on how to weaken America from within.  In the short term, some of this harm may not be readily visible, but over the longer term, the brain drain of top scientist and researchers - and the growing hesitancy of the best and brightest to come to America - combined with disruption of international trade and the growing realization around the world that America is no longer reliable ally will bring real economic harm. Meanwhile, the Felon's ill-conceive war with Iran is eroding America's military strength and appears likely to cause more spikes in energy prices and higher consumer prices.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the short sightedness of the Felon's policies and how nothing has been learned from the decline of past world power such as the UK.  Here are excerpts:

In June 1897, Great Britain, at the apex of empire, organized an elaborate pageant celebrating Queen Victoria’s 60 years on the throne. The industrial revolution had turned a small island nation into an economic and military superpower. The writer Rudyard Kipling, one of imperialism’s greatest apologists, was asked to contribute an ode for the queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Yet far from boasting about the empire that Kipling adored, the poem he wrote imagined its eventual end. “Far-called, our navies melt away; / On dune and headland sinks the fire,” he wrote. “Lo, all our pomp of yesterday / Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!”

Much less humility was on display as the United States celebrated its 250th anniversary. “We will always be on top,” Donald Trump said in his July 4 speech. “We will never let our country fall.” Yet even as he insisted that U.S. global dominance will last forever, Trump is busily dismantling the very economic underpinnings that would ensure future American might.

When economies lag, hegemony becomes unsustainable. Britain’s decline took only a few short decades. The Soviet Union rivaled America militarily but could not keep up economically, and unraveled as a result of its inability to grow. Americans today enjoy material abundance scarcely imaginable in Kipling’s day. That is the reaped reward of scientific prowess, high-skilled immigration, the rule of law, free trade, and stable monetary policy—all of which Trump is jeopardizing in his current term.

In the postindustrial world, ideas are the ultimate engine of growth. “Productivity isn’t everything, but, in the long run, it is almost everything,” the economist Paul Krugman once remarked. Much of America’s outperformance of Europe in the past two decades can be explained by greater efficiency in creating goods and services. The United States is still the best place in the world to be rewarded for inventions and other advancements. Yet the pace of future discoveries could soon decelerate. Out of distaste for elite universities and the study of disfavored subjects, the Trump administration suspended and canceled nearly 8,000 scientific grants in 2025, . . . Federal scientific agencies have seen their workforces slashed. If the president had his way with the federal budget, non-defense research funding would be cut by 35 percent.

One reason for America’s technological ascendance has been its capacity to siphon brainpower from the rest of the world. From 1901 to 2024, 410 Americans have won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, medicine, economics, and physics. Of those, 35 percent were immigrants.

This immigration-innovation linkage ought to be easily detectable even from the Oval Office . . . . Yet the Trump administration’s hostility toward immigration is not limited to undocumented or low-skilled entrants. The president has attempted to add a $100,000 fee to applicants seeking H-1B visas, intended for skilled workers in health care and technology. The administration is also close to finalizing four-year limits on student visas—which would make most Ph.D. programs difficult to complete for international students.

In their book Why Nations Fail, the Nobel Prize–winning economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argued that dependable, pluralistic institutions are essential for long-run growth. . . . These norms and institutions are buckling under the pressure. The president treats the law as a tool to punish enemies and reward friends.

Far from avoiding conflicts of interest and the appearance of impropriety, the president is aggressively monetizing the office—earning $2 billion last year, largely from cryptocurrency sales. The president wields his pardon opportunity to reward his supporters, even those convicted of corruption in elected office and serious fraud. Such capricious governance has not immediately made America less hospitable for investment. However, the risk is not of imminent economic recession, but a steady erosion that becomes apparent only years from now.

Just as British might was once underwritten by the ascendancy of the pound, America benefits from the dollar’s status as the default currency of global commerce. The dollar’s place in international finance is sustained only in trust: in the strength of American institutions, in the full faith and credit of the Treasury, and in the stability of the global financial system. Trumpism is an attack on all three pillars. . . . Because of his tax cuts, the American debt has continued to grow at an extraordinary rate. Trump’s unilateral imposition of sweeping tariffs on the rest of the world—and the abusive way he speaks of allies—weaken trust in both Pax Americana and the dominance of the dollar.

Trump has committed his administration to an idiosyncratic vision of American greatness. It is a greatness so internally brittle that it requires extraordinary governmental pressure against institutions and people who disagree with the administration’s aims. Yet it is also so self-assured that America can safely jettison the postwar international order it built, in trade and military alliances, without risk to American supremacy. . . . Trump, as his defenders tell it, has canceled the expensive clean-energy projects of his predecessor Joe Biden, while supporting fossil-fuel electricity generation that will power the data centers needed here and now.

This argument—a monomaniacal fixation on preventing America from being overtaken by China as Britain was overtaken by America—is worth taking seriously. But it is undercut by Trump’s other actions. Today’s advantages in artificial intelligence will be hard to maintain unless the United States keeps attracting the field’s best minds—especially given the declining literacy and numeracy of American students. Building supply chains that exclude China would be easier if allies were not also charged high tariffs. Disregarding the eventual harms of climate change does not just affect future Americans; it also cedes the field of clean-energy technology to China.

A world order led by China’s authoritarian rulers will still be less attractive than the American-led one that Trump is creating. But the more mercurial the United States acts—the more markets are balkanized, private wealth is contingent on political favor—the less advantage the rest of the world will see in choosing Washington over Beijing.

A more measured defense of Trumponomics is to note that it may last only two more years. Courts have also blocked some of the president’s most aggressive actions—such as his attempts to remove a Fed governor and impose blanket tariffs under emergency authority, and his retaliation against law firms that challenge him. . . . . four years of such policies will still take a serious toll, both on quantifiable measures such as health-care costs and scientific capacity and unquantifiable ones such as the trust that allies place in America’s security guarantees. Furthermore, Trumpism may linger as the dominant ideology in the GOP even after Trump leaves office. The irony is that policies intended to “make America great again” would instead push it toward Britain’s fate.

For Britain, decline set in slowly. Despite inventing the technologies that permanently altered the world, it eventually fell behind America and Germany in technical prowess and output. This slippage could be obscured for as long as Britain retained its empire and London remained the epicenter of the global financial system. But the productivity gap would ultimately result in Britain’s dethroning.

Reflecting on what turned out to be his country’s apogee, Kipling wrote a memento mori, presciently reminding his compatriots that power is inevitably transient. Trump entertains no such thought. “We will always be the best,” he said in his July 4 speech. Perhaps this really is, as the president claimed, “the dawn of the golden age of America

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The Ukraine-Russia War Has Reached a New Phase

With the constant chaos generated by the Felon and the continued murder of people by ICE, it's easy to forget about the war in Ukraine and the importance of seeing a Russian defeat for not only Ukraine, but also Europe and the world as a whole.  Nothing sends a message to dictators with visions/delusions of grandeur like Putin's than to see one of their number go down to defeat. Sadly, the Felon - who seeks to emulate Putin as both a dictator and in terms of his rampant corruption - has vacillated in support for Ukraine and has likely allowed the war to drag on.  As a piece in the New York Times lays out, Ukraine has proven adaptable and has created its own domestically built drones that are taking the war to the interior of Russia (see the image), but the need for ballistic missile interceptors remains high on Ukraine's needs if the war is to turn further in Ukraine's favor.  Meanwhile, the USA and Iran are back in a shooting war and America's stockpiles of Patriot and other missile systems are being  depleted.  One can only hope Ukrainian ingenuity and aid from Europe will help to further turn the tide of Putin's aggression:

Back when the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was in its early stages, the cry from the West was to supply Ukraine with enough artillery shells and tanks to blunt the Russian onslaught. Now, well into the war’s fifth year, this is a far different fight, one that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, says has become a decisive “battle in the sky.” It is a decisive moment, too, for the West.

The ground war is at a stalemate. Russia is still clawing away at Ukrainian territory, but at a snail’s pace and extraordinary cost. Ukraine says it inflicted almost 40,000 Russian dead and wounded in June, or about 1,300 casualties per square kilometer “seized or infiltrated,” according to the Institute for the Study of War — an attrition rate 19 times what it was a year earlier.

Russia is pummeling Ukraine with salvo after deadly salvo of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles; Ukraine is using ever more sophisticated and longer-range drones to drive Russia’s fleet away from Ukraine in the Black Sea, starve Russian-occupied Crimea and, most effectively, strike oil facilities and military installations deep inside Russia. Long lines for gas in Moscow and black smoke billowing from a refinery in distant Omsk, and images of victims being pulled out of demolished apartment blocks in Kyiv, tell the rest of the story. . . . . “And frankly, in that contest it matters far less whose territory is larger.”

What matters, he made clear, is to have the means to block the Russian fusillades, and there lies the current crunch. After America’s large-scale expenditure of crucial missiles against Iran, including the prized Patriot interceptors, precious few Patriots remain to share with Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky said that in the intense Russian attack on July 6, Ukraine shot down drones and cruise missiles but did not have enough interceptors to stop a single ballistic missile.

So interceptors, and specifically Patriots, have replaced artillery shells as the indispensable weapon for Ukraine in what may well be the end game of this war. That was at least part of the thinking behind Mr. Zelensky’s government reshuffle announced on Sunday; the “most important” matter for the new government to address, he said, was the procurement and production of Patriot missiles.

The money is there — NATO has pledged $80 billion in military aid for Ukraine, and individual NATO countries have allocated billions more. [The Felon] President Trump also seems to be shifting his favor back toward Ukraine after its recent military successes.

At the NATO summit meeting in Ankara, Turkey, last week, he called Ukraine’s leadership “ingenious,” and said he’d license Ukraine to produce the Patriot missiles it so urgently needs. Mr. Zelensky, reflecting the hard lessons of a rocky relationship, told The Financial Times, “President Trump wants to be where there’s success.”

[I]t would take years for Ukraine to start full production. In the meantime, Ukraine has to compete with U.S. armed forces and 16 other foreign clients waiting for Patriot deliveries, and these fancy weapons take time to put together.

Each $3.9 million missile takes about two years to make, and Lockheed currently produces only about 600 a year. In the 39 days of bombardment before the cease-fire with Iran began, the United States used up about half of its inventory of 2,330 Patriots, so just replacing them would take three and a half years, according to an estimate by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

That is not what Mr. Zelensky wants to hear. “It is simply absurd that, in the modern world, production has still not been scaled up to the level actually required to protect people from ballistic terror,” he said in one of his nightly video addresses.

That does not mean Ukraine is doomed. Far from it. The Ukrainians have displayed remarkable ingenuity in adapting to new forms of warfare, most notably in the development of sophisticated, inexpensive and lethal drones. Following the old precept of “shoot the archer, not the arrow,” Ukraine has been increasingly targeting military-industrial facilities deep in Russia with considerable effect, as evidenced by Russia’s recent ban on the export of diesel fuel. Ukraine’s relentless drone attacks on Crimea and Russian shipping in the Sea of Azov have also been highly effective.

Authorities in Crimea have declared a state of emergency because of acute fuel shortages and power outages. In addition to drones, whole battalions of tracked and wheeled robots fight on the ground, conducting thousands of missions every month to haul ammunition, evacuate the wounded, lay mines and hold land.

It is what David Petraeus and Clara Kaluderovic, writing in The Wall Street Journal, called “adaptation warfare,” and for now, Ukraine is doing it better. As Mr. Zelensky put it, “Today, I believe victory in this war belongs to whoever is smarter.”

Overall, it is difficult to fathom how Russians have put up for so long with Vladimir Putin’s maniacal mission to destroy Ukraine, given the growing pain of Ukrainian strikes, a battlefield death toll of about 450,000, deteriorating living standards and the revival of a Soviet-style police state.

Yet Mr. Putin continues to believe that he can bring Kyiv to its knees with regular barrages. That makes it imperative for Ukraine, at this critical juncture of the war, to find ways of surviving the dearth of Patriot missiles while it hammers away at Russia.

In the meantime, it is imperative for the United States and Europe to do what they can to help Ukraine protect itself. In his last undertaking before his death, Senator Lindsey Graham had traveled to Ukraine. From there, he said he had reached agreement with the White House on a bipartisan bill to sanction buyers of Russian oil. That bill should be quickly advanced. Mr. Trump also should urgently act on his pledge to grant Ukraine a license to produce Patriots, and also to accelerate production at home and in Europe. Europeans, too, should share as many air-defense missiles as they can and redouble their efforts to help Ukraine develop new systems. That may not block Russian missiles right away, but it would be a powerful message to Mr. Putin that his time is fast running out.

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