Claims

Ukraine has taken out somewhere around one-third of Russia's oil refining capacity using drones that can fly 1,400 km into Russian territory, with Kiev's own general staff claiming the number is closer to 43% and independent energy analysts landing nearer to a third.

Instead of trying to match Russia tank-for-tank, Europe plans a 'porcupine defense' that makes territory decentralized, prickly, and expensive to invade so that nobody bothers trying to swallow it.

Russia spends enormous sums on its military and still could not take Ukraine; Europe collectively already outspends Russia on defense, is wealthier, more populous, and further up the technology ladder, yet Russia is presented as a threat that should cause panic.

Russia advances at about 70 meters a day in Ukraine, which is slower than the Saudi Arabian military's advance rate.

Certain foreign policy commentators believe the Ukraine-Russia conflict can be wrapped up with one neat executive deal based on the 'cornered Putin theory'—the idea that cornering Russia or a nuclear superpower might cause it to do something drastic.

In Putin's own autobiography story, the rat did not negotiate and Putin did not win—the rat attacked and Putin ran away, yet diplomats citing this story seem to have forgotten how it ends.

Ukraine's reluctance to sign a peace deal is not because Ukrainians are uninterested in peace but because deals with Moscow tend not to survive contact with the next Russian offensive, as demonstrated by the Budapest Memorandum (1994) followed by Crimea annexation (2014) followed by full invasion (2022).

NATO is simultaneously in the best and worst shape of its life—expanding, rearming, and better funded than ever, while being hollowed out by the prospect of America walking away.

Kremlin officials declared that Zelinski's decree banning Ukrainian strikes on Red Square during the Victory Day parade as a formal exchange was a 'silly joke,' which was true though possibly not in the way they meant.

In early July 2026, Russia's deputy prime minister Alexander Novak announced an immediate ban on diesel exports running through July 31st and that Russia would start importing refined fuel from abroad, including emergency gasoline shipments from India.

Crimea, annexed in 2014, experienced weeks of drone strikes on power substations, oil terminals, and ferries, leading Russian authorities to declare a state of emergency indefinitely, halt civilian petrol sales, and plunge cities into darkness.

Air raid sirens in Crimea were switched off not because Crimea is safe but because a senior local official explained that if they left the sirens on, they'd be sounding 22 hours a day, with residents suspecting the real reason is concerns about the tourist season.

NATO planning was built around the 1990s Gulf War model of overwhelming expensive conventional force, but in Ukraine, Russia's hundred million dollar weapon systems are being destroyed by disposable drones costing far less.

CSIS reports Russian battlefield casualties (dead, wounded, and missing) at approximately 1.44 million people between February 2022 and June 2026, including up to 450,000 deaths, meaning Russia has lost more soldiers in Ukraine than the United States has lost in every war combined since 1945, four times over.

A $100,000 drone that destroys a $50 million jet on the ground is not a fair fight and it is not meant to be, raising the question whether Europe actually needs fleets of expensive American fighter jets or if that spending is more about sending tribute to Washington to keep the security relationship sweet.

The irony is that the US defense establishment spent decades lecturing Europe about spending more on its own military, and Europe has now started deliberately designing a force that runs without American weapons and is built in factories that aren't in America.

Russian billionaire Andre Melanchenko sketched five scenarios for Russia's future in an essay for the Economist, and the triumphant return to superpower status was not among them—the scenarios range from state collapse to absorption into China's orbit as a supplier of raw materials and strategic buffer.

Putin flew to Beijing in May specifically hoping to close the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline deal but came home with more than 40 signed documents on trade and nuclear security and nothing on the pipeline, with China content to let Russia sit while squeezing the terms.

By launching a full-scale invasion, Putin did the cornering—he backed Ukraine into a corner and waited for it to fold, but instead it turned around and lunged, leaving Putin backed against the wall running a war of attrition that is dismantling his own economy.

Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Mertz committed to borrowing more than 800 billion euros by 2030 to rebuild military and infrastructure, with a target of defense spending at 3.5% of GDP by 2029, up from 1.5% as recently as 2023.

European officials have begun openly discussing American 'kill switches'—the possibility that a US administration could restrict software updates or spare parts over foreign policy disagreement and turn an ally's air force into a collection of parked aircraft.

Ukraine went from napkin sketch to combat-tested Flamingo cruise missiles in under nine months and now builds them for roughly half a million dollars each, about one-fifth the price of an American Tomahawk with double the range.

From Kiev's perspective, a settlement with Moscow is not a peace treaty but a 'half time'—a pause before the next Russian offensive.

Even if Putin wanted a diplomatic exit tomorrow, Europe has almost nothing to put on the table—it cannot hand over Ukrainian territory and the strongest inducement it can offer is the promise of somewhat lighter sanctions later on, which is not a triumph to bring home after four years, several hundred thousand casualties, and an emptied national wealth fund.

We are in an undeclared 'World War III' in which NATO has suffered military defeat in Ukraine and the US has suffered economic defeat to China; the next phase will be aggressive US moves across Central and South America, ultimately producing a classic sphere-of-influence world.

Russia was always going to win the Ukraine war as a grinding war of attrition because it produces vastly more energy than it needs, can simply halt exports before starving its military, has five times the population, and is backstopped by China; targeting Russian refineries only hurts global consumers.

Russia's global standing will be embellished rather than diminished by the Ukraine war, because its perceived victory over the 'colonialist West' will be read as a shattering defeat to NATO, and history is written by the winners.

The European Union will not survive the end of the Ukraine war in its current state, because none of the necessary energy fixes (restarting Russian gas, legalizing fracking, salvaging German nuclear, reviving North Sea and Dutch gas fields) will happen, and the Ukraine situation will drive territorial wedges between Ukraine and Poland, Romania, and Hungary.

US 'war on the cartels' in Mexico and Colombia and potential conflict in Venezuela are fundamentally about securing oil resources for Western super-majors (e.g., Chevron, ExxonMobil) rather than drug enforcement; the Donbas has no core US strategic interest but Venezuela does.

The Middle East will likely thread the needle into relative neutrality and peace because conflict there is in nobody's interest (not China's, the US's, Europe's, or Israel's), while the real action shifts to the Western Hemisphere and Arctic.

There will be a kinetic conflict and regime-change operation against the Maduro regime that will turn Venezuela into a disaster like Libya, because the US neocon 'uniparty' fails to learn lessons of the past and 'when you're in the bomb making business, peace is a working capital problem.'

When the Trump administration speaks of a 'war on drug cartels' in Latin America, it is really a war on black-market energy pirates, because the cartels are deeply interwoven with the oil and gas business — taking a 'vig' on pipeline rights-of-way and running black markets in diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel.

The Russia-China Power of Siberia 2 deal (~5 BCF/day, from Yamal Arctic gas that would have gone to Europe) signals the world bifurcating into a G7-led Western bloc and a global-south/BRICS bloc, while most consequentially isolating Europe, which is de-industrializing rapidly after trading cheap Russian pipeline gas for expensive American LNG.

Hungary and Slovakia cannot quit Russian gas because doing so would impale their economies, so they will not comply with Brussels' demands to do so.

Thucydides Trap Only Half the Time

The Thucydides Trap is not inevitable — Graham Allison himself noted it occurs only about half the times a rising power challenges an established one — and the China case is weaker still because China's rise depended on the American-led globalized order it is now even more dependent on, so a war would not merely defeat China but trigger de-industrialization and famine.

Iran Won the Region but Cannot Govern It

Iran spent 30 years backing out-of-power factions against Arab, secular and US-backed governments and largely got what it wanted, but now that the dog has caught the car it finds the region ungovernable because it destroyed the poles of stability and enraged the Sunnis and Arabs, driving them to band together (e.g. the Abraham Accords) against Iran.

Russian Weakness, Not Strength, Brings Nukes

It is Russian weakness, not aggression, that brings nuclear war into play: Russia's army fights as a mob with weapons having lost combined-arms competence, so if it reaches Poland and faces NATO the casualty ratios will be obscene, yet it must still reach the Vistula, so it would attempt a short brutal negotiation to break NATO and, failing that, launch strategic nukes because without securing these positions the Russian state ceases to function within ~15 years.

US Navy No Longer Able to Police Seas

The US Navy shifted from a 600-ship fleet of mostly small vessels that could be everywhere at once to about 250 ships centered on aircraft carrier battle groups, making it capable of knocking over a country but no longer able to throw a wide net of naval security globally, so even the Houthis' Red Sea attacks stress it to the brink and a second simultaneous event would likely exceed its capacity.

US Mideast Forces Stay on Bases

Because Washington decided ISIS is the bigger threat and to minimize combat in favor of training and intelligence, US forces in the region rarely leave their bases and don't shoot back, which gives Iranian-backed militias an easy propaganda win from every mortar or drone attack and invites hundreds of such attacks against US positions.

US Could Choose to Stabilize One Region

One falsifying variable is American agency: although the US no longer has the navy to secure global trade, it could choose to stabilize one or two regions (Western Europe, East Asia, South Asia, the Balkans) regardless of return, injecting life into the system for that region with possible second-order benefits elsewhere — so watch whether America goes as populist and nationalist as it currently appears.

US Mideast Role Was About Allies' Oil

Until 1992 US involvement in the Middle East was never about getting crude for itself, since the North American energy market was largely self-contained, but about securing oil for its allies; the US faced price shocks but never an actual shortage, which is why Iran's 1979 turn to fundamentalism mattered, as Iran's threat over Persian Gulf exports could unravel the alliance.

Bretton Woods Was a Security-For-Trade Bargain

The core of Bretton Woods was the US military making the global oceans safe for anyone's commerce regardless of who they were or what they did, in exchange for those countries siding with the US during the Cold War; this let defeated nations emerge with trade access as if they were the world's most powerful empires, while America deliberately did not invest its own economy in the network so as not to become just another conquering empire.

Geography and Demography Are Destiny

Some combination of geography and demography determines a society's fate more than ideas do; you can have whatever ideas you want, but if you live in a malaria swamp without navigable waterways there is only so much you can accomplish.

Iran Needles US Expecting Negotiation

Iran is not deterred because its strategic class believes the US will never give up its global-cop role, so the more they needle America the likelier it is to come to the negotiating table; Zeihan considers this a miscalculation, but it is the dominant Iranian strategic view.

China Most Hurt by Closed Sea Lanes

If US naval policing of the seas fails, the country that feels the most pain is not the US but China, because China is the most dependent on open seas it does not police and lacks ships with the range to police them even if it wanted to.

Iran's Oil Exports Hinge on Kharg Island

Iran is extremely vulnerable because almost all its oil is exported via Kharg Island, which is not even connected to the mainland by a bridge; destroying the facilities on either side of the strait separating Kharg from the mainland would drop Iranian oil exports to effectively zero for years.

Iraq War Removed the Check on Iran

By destroying Saddam Hussein's government and botching the post-Baathist reconstruction, the US shattered the Mesopotamian check on Persian expansion that had existed for a millennium, allowing Iran to project power into southern Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon by empowering out-of-power sectarian groups, which (along with parallel Saudi sponsorship of Sunni militants) half burned the region down.

Israel's Firebreak Buffer Strategy

Because the Levant has never had the population density to defend itself, Israel survives by turning bordering countries into allies (Egypt), dependencies/proxies (Jordan), or failed states (Lebanon, nearly Syria), creating a firebreak so that any larger invader must first cross those buffer zones — a strategy that works for now though not necessarily forever.

Israel-Saudi De Facto Alliance

Israel and Saudi Arabia have operated a de facto alliance for at least a decade — Israeli forces training Saudis, two-way intelligence cooperation against Iran, and mutual cover when the US sanctions either for human rights — and absent the Gaza war they would likely already have a formal peace deal, with a generational split in Saudi Arabia over whether to extract something for the Palestinians or throw them under the bus.

Israel's Success Comes From Grafted Skills

Israel is an economic anomaly in an arid region because returning Jews brought skill sets developed over centuries elsewhere, plus capital and Western sponsorship — a full-on graft of human capital onto a new geography, the same mechanism that makes North America and Australia different from Europe — producing a high-tech technocracy because of the people, not their ethnicity.