(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in RealClearDefense. Is There a Strategic Nuclear Arms Race?)

Yes, there is a nuclear arms race. But the U.S. is not in it and has not been since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR. On the contrary, the U.S. has significantly reduced both its reliance on nuclear weapons and its inventory of nuclear forces by over 90%.

Two major countries engaged in an accelerating nuclear arms race are Russia and China. Trouble remains as while thankfully, the U.S. has now taken critical steps to modernize its strategic nuclear forces, replacing its aging forces on a one-for one basis—the U.S. remains from 2.5 to 6 times worse off in the nuclear production business as the United States is racing only to stay in place.

Russia has not only modernized its strategic nuclear forces, (over 90% completed) they have also significantly increased the number of nuclear warheads they can deliver, replacing, for example the single warhead Topol ICBMs with multiwarhead Yars ICBMs, creating a warhead count potentially far in excess of New Start Treaty limits.

Russia currently has 168 Yars ICBMs (24 silo, 144 mobile), each carrying 4-6 RVs, 36 Yars-S each carrying three heavy re-entry vehicles (RVs); 46 SS-18 ICBMs each carrying 10 RVs, being replaced by the Sarmat each carrying up to 15-20 light (90-150 kt) RVs. The SS-19s are largely retired except for eighteen carrying the Avangard hypersonic vehicle. Current total ICBM warheads are between 1916-2190 if fully uploaded.

Russia has 5 Delta-IV SSBNs each carrying 16 Layner SLBMs and each capable of carrying 8-12 RVs. Russia also has 8 Borei SSBNs with two more under construction and two to four more planned after that. Each Borei caries 16 Bulava SLBMs, each SLBM carries 6 RVs for a total of 1312-1632 warheads. Votinsk, the production plant, can produce Yars and Bulava missiles at a rate of ~40/year.

Russia’s bomber force is rapidly decaying—The ~52 Tu-95 Bears were to be modernized with new engines and avionics, but that program is moving slowly due to sanctions, and the same is true for the 13 Tu-160 Blackjack bombers to be modernized to the Tu-160 M2 standard. Russia planned on building fifty additional Tu-160M2s, but that program is also delayed, as is Russia’s new stealth bomber the PAK-DA. Total current bomber weapon numbers are 964 bringing total Russian strategic nuclear force totals to 4192-4786 warheads.

China’s rapid nuclear build up has been characterized as “breath-taking” by U.S. officials. Although China continues to claim a minimum deterrent posture retaliatory only in nature, their forces as deployed enable them to execute any policy/strategy they wish.

China has 96 DF-31 mobile ICBMs each with 1-3 RVs; 84 DF-41 ICBMs with 2-10 RVs; 40 DF-5 B/C liquid fuel silo based ICBMs with 10 RVs (DF-5C); 320-360 silo based DF-31/41 in three ICBM fields. China recently show-cased the new DF-61 ICBM, close in size to the DF-41 and more technologically advanced. A recent DIA report stated that China would have 700 ICBMs by 2035, some 75% greater than the United States.

China’s sea leg of their nuclear TRIAD consists of 6 Type 094 Jin class SSBN, each with 12 JL-3 SLBMs with 1-3 RVs for a total of between 72-216 SLBM warheads. Another 6-8 Type 096 SSBNs are expected to be deployed by 2035, each carrying 16-20 JL-3 or new class SLBMs. Total current SLBM warhead count is 216, but the new 096 SSBN would add another 288-480 warheads.

China’s air leg of the TRIAD consists of 90-100 H-6K bombers carrying 6-7 CJ-20 cruise missiles (2000 km range) as well as 20-30 H-6N carrying one new JL-1 nuclear missile revealed in the recent military parade. China can produce 15-20 H-6 bombers/year, but H-6 production will likely be replaced by production of the H-20 stealth bomber. China’s stealth bomber is expected first flight in 2025/26 and will have a range of 8,500 km and be capable of carrying 10-16 weapons. Current total bomber weapon count is 630 warheads.

China current total strategic nuclear weapons count is 4846 if fully uploaded. This is in stark contrast to the U.S. Intelligence Community statement that China only has ~ 600 strategic nuclear weapons. However simple math shows that if you take the current Russian and Chinese missile numbers stated by FAS and the Intelligence community and multiply by the estimated WH carriage capability you produce far more WH numbers than 600.

The strategic nuclear modernization and build-up programs of China and Russia are largely completed, with Russia completing deployment of at least 46 Sarmat ICBMs with 15-20 RVs as well as the Arcturus SSBN with a 2035 IOC, and eventually the PAK-DA bomber.

China’s strategic nuclear force is forecast to continue to grow to 700 ICBMs by 2035 as well as the addition of the Type 096 SSBN, additional H-6 bombers and a new H-20 stealth bomber.

In contrast, the U.S. is only modernizing its TRIAD, not increasing its force size or capabilities, replacing ageing systems on a one-for-one basis with no increase in deployed nuclear warheads—in no way can these modernization actions be viewed as “Arms Racing.”

The Sentinel ICBM with one warhead will replace the existing 450 MM III ICBM which are 55 years old and armed with one warhead starting in the 2030’s and completed by 2040’s. The Columbia SSBN, with 16 D-5 SLBMs (Currently armed with ~4 RVs) will replace the OHIO SSBN with 20 D-5 SLBMs on a one-for-one basis starting in 2030-2 and completed by 2042. D-5 SLBMs from Ohio D-5 SSBNs will go into the Columbia SSBNs. The U.S. sea leg of the TRIAD could have 1536 warheads if fully uploaded w/8 RVs/SLBM.

The B-21 dual role conventional/nuclear bomber will enter the force in 2027 at a rate of 7-10/year for a total of 100 bombers. They can carry B-61 bombs or eight nuclear AGM-181 Long Range Stand-Off (LRSO) cruise missiles. They will replace the 45 B-1 conventional bomber and the 20 B-2 bombers. The 76 strong B-52 force will be modernized into the B-52J configuration with new engines and avionics and fly until ~ 2070, when it will be 100 years old. The B-52J will be capable of carrying up to 20 long range strike options or cruise missiles.

In summary, while China, Russia and North Kores have been “Arms Racing” since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been a side-line observer, and the current long delayed U.S. strategic force modernization program is replacing systems ageing out on a one-for-one basis.

without increasing capability while Russia, China and North Korea have not only modernized their force they have also significantly increased capabilities. The U.S. is facing a two-peer deterrence dilemma—a Russia with as many as 4786 strategic nuclear warheads; China with potentially upwards of 4846 strategic nuclear weapons for a combined force of 9632 strategic nuclear warheads.

The U.S. will have 3010 strategic nuclear weapons and approximately 200 theater weapons if we upload all our missiles. As stated by the U.S. Strategic Posture Commission as well as a growing number of U.S. officials, the U.S. will have to increase its nuclear forces—but how and how fast?

2025-2045 Annual Production & C&R/U.S. Ratio

	United States	Russia	China	C&R/U.S. Ratio
SLBM Missiles/yr	10	19	34	5.3/1
ICBM Missiles/yr	20	13	35	2.651
Nuclear Bombers/yr	3	3.3	5	2.8/1
Cruise Missiles/Brs	28	40	34	2.6/1
SNDV/yr Total	61	105	108	3.5/1
Strategic Nuclear WH/yr	80	235	235	5.9/1

*The chart represents the average annual production rate for three alternative nuclear forces if built over twenty years from 2025-45 based on projected force structures planned by the United States and in part planned and announced by Russia and China.

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

A month and a half after the end of the “12-Day War” between Iran and Israel, the consequences of that conflict have become increasingly clear. Both sides are now mobilizing forces and allies, and in both Tehran and Jerusalem, talk of renewed confrontation is growing louder. Multiple indicators suggest a high likelihood of a large-scale Israeli strike against Iran in the coming months, particularly from mid-September to October 2025. Israel’s strategic imperatives, the Islamic Republic’s defensive mobilization, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s political calculations all reinforce this trajectory, forming part of a phased campaign aimed at weakening Iran’s regional military network.

The Islamic Republic has repeatedly declared its intention to resume uranium enrichment. Abbas Araghchi, in a recent state television interview, confirmed that American and Israeli attacks had damaged Iran’s nuclear facilities, calling the strikes “the greatest violation of international law” and an “unforgivable crime.” On the other side, U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that these attacks prevented Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and thereby averted a broader war in the Middle East. He warned that if Iran restarted its nuclear program, Washington would strike again. Trump added that while Iran had long been a source of instability and hatred in the region, he believed its trajectory would change in the coming years.

Several strategic imperatives strengthen the likelihood of Israeli military action against Iran. First is the dismantling of Iran’s regional military network. Israel’s ongoing operations in Gaza and its persistent pressure on Hezbollah in Lebanon form part of a broader strategy to reduce multi-front threats ahead of a direct confrontation with Tehran. This weakening of proxy forces gives Israel the ability to focus resources and planning on a decisive strike against the Islamic Republic without facing overwhelming retaliatory fire from its regional allies.

Second, Israel views Iran’s internal fractures as an exploitable opportunity. Divisions between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the army, as well as tensions between the IRGC and the Supreme Leader’s advisory council, could hinder Tehran’s ability to mount a unified response, complicating command and control in the crucial first hours of any assault.

Third, timing carries political weight. Netanyahu may seek to act before October 2025 to bolster his domestic position, reaffirm Israel’s deterrence capabilities, and influence Washington’s strategic narrative.

Meanwhile, Mossad has intensified its intelligence-gathering and covert operations inside Iran, including target identification and asset placement. Recent drone strikes inside Iranian territory that eliminated senior military commanders are considered part of the preparatory phase for a coordinated campaign of special forces, airpower, and cyberattacks. The primary aim of these measures is to disable radar systems, command centers, and ballistic missile launch infrastructure before full-scale hostilities begin. Israel’s military posture also reflects rebuilding: rotating units out for rest despite political pressure for continued operations in Gaza, while training for long-range strikes and high-tempo air campaigns.

In response, the Islamic Republic has created a “Defense Council” under Ali Larijani and merged 13 security agencies into three super-structures to prepare for a wider confrontation. However, such rapid restructuring risks administrative frictions, potentially creating exploitable vulnerabilities in the opening hours of an Israeli offensive.

The role of the United States, particularly Donald Trump, remains vital to Israel’s calculations. Netanyahu seeks political backing or at least cover from Washington to minimize global backlash and widen his operational window. Through pro-Israel lobbying in the U.S., he aims to counter Trump’s isolationist tendencies, while simultaneously engaging in transactional diplomacy with Russia, Ukraine, and the South Caucasus to reduce geopolitical obstacles and secure maneuvering space. This triangular diplomatic effort could limit the likelihood of a multi-front conflict erupting

during an attack on Iran.

According to Israel’s military doctrine, the probability of a multidimensional operation is extremely high—combining precision air and missile strikes with cyber sabotage, and potentially including preemptive or simultaneous strikes on Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces. Neutralizing Iran’s proxies is seen as essential to shielding Israel and its regional allies from disruption during the main operation. Israel has also demonstrated its readiness to absorb casualties and reputational costs, underscoring its political and military resolve to act decisively before the strategic window closes.

Nevertheless, serious risks persist: the uncertainty of U.S. politics and Trump’s inclination to avoid new wars; the threat of powerful Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the PMF; and the possibility of a preemptive Iranian move through cyber or missile strikes. Still, Israel’s plan rests on the assumption that a powerful first strike combined with Iran’s slower decision-making processes will secure the advantage.

Taken together, the convergence of strategic imperatives, operational readiness, and political opportunity makes the likelihood of a major Israeli strike against Iran before year’s end very high. The operation would aim to exploit Iran’s internal divisions, blunt proxy responses, and destroy missile, nuclear, and command infrastructure. Such a strike would dramatically escalate direct confrontation between Tehran and Jerusalem and test Israel’s missile defense capabilities against Iran’s retaliation. Operational indicators—including increased Israeli reconnaissance flights over Iraq and Syria, redeployment of missile defense systems such as Iron Dome, and heightened diplomatic maneuvering in Washington, Moscow, and across the region—point to the approach of a decisive phase.

Aso Qader is a media associate of the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington, DC based think-and-do tank.

(This article originally appeared at https://humanevents.com/2025/09/05/shea-bradley-farrell-go-woke-go-broke-is-not-just-a-slogan-its-a-fact#google_vignette)

President Donald Trump is aggressively cutting “woke” programs, funding, and hiring practices in the United States, including in corporate America, dealing a death blow to the creeping globalist agenda of Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum (WEF).

Under a Trump executive order, U.S. government agencies are identifying companies that violate federal discrimination laws, including those related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices. DEI policies entail disparate treatment in the terms, conditions, and privileges of employment if based on race, sex, or other protected characteristics –a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In practice, the rigid orthodoxy of DEI stifles hiring and employee morale, undermines hard work and unity, and strangles freedom and innovation.

DEI policies are “exclusive,” overlooking merit-based achievement by requiring hiring quotas of certain racial or other identity groups or giving preference to DEI-aligned suppliers. DEI policies divide employees into identity subgroups and place subgroup interests over the interests of the whole, such as elevating transgender bathroom choices over the privacy of other employees.

Feeling the pressure of Trump’s anti-woke agenda, companies such as Walmart, JPMorgan, Tractor Supply Co., Harley-Davidson, John Deere, Lowe’s, Ford, and even McDonald’s are walking back or eliminating their previous DEI and ESG policies. ESG or Environmental, Social, and Governance, promotes radical environmental policy and is like DEI in that it includes discriminatory programs like critical race theory in human resource practices and hiring policies based on race, sex, or other identity groups. They are also burdensome and costly to implement.

In 2019, unbeknownst to most Americans, close to 200 CEOs from America’s top companies chose to adopt the “stakeholder capitalism” of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum. In a single statement, the purpose of American corporations was redefined with a globalist economic model, and American businesses became subject to the WEF practice of rating corporations based on ESG “performance” metrics.

Stakeholder capitalism (in reality, having very little to do with capitalism) is a theory promoted by Schwab since the early 1970s. It asserts that the corporate purpose is not to maximize profits for shareholders, but to maximize value for all stakeholders —including government agencies, community members, activist groups, non-profits, and companies.

This may sound like a lofty goal, but the practice of stakeholder capitalism is far from adequate, prosperous, or even fair. Asset management firms (like the infamous BlackRock) direct investment funds to companies with high ESG and DEI scores, ultimately using companies to shape society in the Leftist ideology of the elite echelon. Instead of acting in the interest of investors, employees, consumers, or shareholders, businesses are at the mercy of “stakeholder activism” to promote woke programming, products, and advertising.

This was a shockingly bad decision by Corporate America, considering that for generations American capitalism had “produced superior stock market returns and broad-based societal gains,” raising living standards for generations of Americans. Europe’s economies, primarily based on stakeholder capitalism for decades, and buried under bureaucracy, burdensome taxes, and extreme woke regulation, have been “largely stagnant” for about the last 15 years. Interestingly, Germany’s economy, which is firmly oriented on stakeholder governance, has only grown by 1% over the past 8 years, while the U.S. economy has grown by 19%.

Millions of Americans, too, are fed up with paying for the so-called “progressive” causes of powerful, out-of-touch corporate elites. Outraged consumers boycott and publicly lash out against companies that go off the woke deep-end, causing many to backtrack their woke ways.

Social media responses against Jaguar, which recently unveiled a bizarre rebranding that included “gender-fluid” models and a shift to all-electric vehicles (and a 97.5% collapse in European sales), were scathing and abundant. Not long before, Jaguar’s brand strategist had proudly announced the establishment of “more than 15 DEI groups” and a “transitioning at work” policy. President Trump called Jaguar’s public embarrassment “a total disaster;” others labelled it “Bud Light 2.0.”

Who could forget the disastrous fall of Bud Light, a company formerly catering to red-blooded Americans that actually believed a guy in a dress, makeup, and pearls could attract beer-drinking customers? Unsurprisingly, Bud Light’s transgender ad led to a boycott of America’s best-selling beer, resulting in a loss of billions of dollars in shareholder value and a 30% drop in sales and customers.

Recently, Target’s CEO stepped down, amid plummeting sales and years of ideological instability. Remember Target’s Pride Month 2023 display, with infant LGBTQ onesies and genitalia-tucking bikini bottoms for boys? Target’s CFO admitted that its “Pride assortment” impacted their bottom line, resulting in a $14 billion loss in Target stock at the time. Sales continue to be flat or falling.

Woke is under attack, and especially where it hurts most –right in the pocketbook. Yet, some companies refuse to learn.

This year, Disney laid off hundreds of employees after the release of its woke version of the movie Snow White, and an “underwhelming box office performance.” In 2023, Disney already laid off 7,000 employees after establishing an “openly gay agenda” in movies and theme parks, including a lesbian kissing scene in the supposedly family-friendly movie Lightyear. This year, Disney is also retreating from its extensive DEI agenda.

For millions of Americans, Cracker Barrel symbolizes Americana, family, goodness, and the essence of comfort food – one of the last remaining reflections of a purer time. But Cracker Barrel’s recent rebranding seemed to reject American cultural heritage, making customers angry. And Cracker Barrel, too, had jumped on the DEI bandwagon with LGBTQ Policies and a dedicated “Pride” website page (now deleted).

Oh, Cracker Barrel, why did you do it?

Corporate executives and leftist media are quick to assure the public that failures of woke companies are due to market shifts or “rapid” transformation of industry –but the timing and public outrage are hard to ignore. American consumers are angry about being told what to believe and how to think, especially when all they want (Starbucks) is just a freakin’ cup of coffee, not a sermon about a self-serving political agenda.

Woke corporatism can be a money-making racket for non-profits and activists. Big money is allocated to “evaluate” the “woke” levels of corporations using metrics based on DEI and ESG performance measurements. Corporations that choose not to comply receive a poor score and public embarrassment. Those that do comply are publicly praised and obtain a perfect “woke” score.

For example, each year at the World Economic Forum, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) reveals its Corporate Equality Index (CEI), a made-up, needless measurement of “corporate America’s roadmap for LGBTQ+ workplace inclusion.” Based on an annual survey, the report gauges “policies, practices and benefits pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) employees.” HRC is funded by organizations such as George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and by businesses including Amazon, American Airlines, The Walt Disney Company, Apple, and many others.

HRC compels and pressures corporations into compliance to achieve a “perfect” index score. An impressive 1500 companies participated in this year’s CEI 2025. Major companies that earned a 100% score include Amtrak, Abercrombie & Fitch Co., Food Lion, PetSmart, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Starbucks, McDonald’s, Visa, CareFirst Inc., and many others.

Fortunately, the great “anti-woke pushback” has gained momentum in the United States, thanks to commonsense Americans and fueled by the leadership and anti-woke agenda of the Trump administration. This year, a “lengthy list” of companies, including the global fast-food giant McDonald’s, pledged to withdraw from the HRC’s Corporate Equality Index. Major companies are rolling back DEI, and investment in ESG is on a steep decline in the U.S. and in Europe.

Finally, after years of ideological posturing and consumer blackmail, corporate elites are finding that “Go Woke, Go Broke” is not just a slogan.

Shea Bradley-Farrell, Ph.D. is a strategist in national security and foreign policy in Washington, D.C. and president of Counterpoint Institute for Policy, Research and Education and a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington, D.C. based think-and-do tank.. Her latest book is Last Warning to the West. Follow her at counterpointinstititute.org or “X” @DrShea_DC and @CounterpointDC.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. No basta con hundir ese barco)

A young Iraqi man comes up from behind a 16-year-old girl standing on the platform waiting for her train. Suddenly he pushes her and sends her falling onto the tracks just as a freight train was passing. Just like that, for no reason. It happened 15 days ago. It has only become known now. Because for two weeks the local authorities and the state police tried by every possible means to prevent the fact from becoming known. They attributed the girl’s death to an accident. And they stubbornly denied that anyone had been involved, least of all an immigrant. They went on denying the truth until two days ago, with the police and the other authorities covering up the crime to the very end against all the proof and evidence gathered by the journalists who have revealed the scandal.

That is already happening all across Europe, but in Spain, star pupils that we are, with even greater cynicism if such a thing is possible. In Spain the authorship of crimes and serious offences is being denied. And blame is also being turned back onto the victims in order to cover up the perpetrators for the mere fact of their being immigrants. Also concealed or denied are the offences of those, Spaniards and foreigners alike, who run the highly lucrative business of bringing in illegal immigrants in supposedly legal fashion under the cloak of humanitarian action and rescue. Which is as false as the German police’s versions in the case of the girl in Göttingen. Neither humanitarian action nor rescue. We are talking about a regulated traffic that they bring in systematically with appointments arranged by traffickers on both sides.

Now a great many frauds have thrown their hands up over Santiago Abascal’s very graphic and accurate phrase that the slavers’ ship must be “confiscated and sunk”, in reference to the best known of Spain’s freebooting human-trafficking vessels, the Open Arms. Abascal has said nothing he has not been saying for almost a decade. Before, there were few of us saying it. Today we are already millions and soon we will be a majority holding that certainty. The criminals who are sinking Spain by encouraging an invasion that endangers all Spaniards and the nation itself must be sunk.

It is delightful to see how the talk-show panellists, so smugly conventional, all of them of both sexes, have worked themselves into a fury because Abascal wants to sink a ship full of refugees. No, you manipulating horde, Abascal did not say that. Abascal said that the ship must be confiscated and afterwards sunk. “That slavers’ ship must be confiscated and sunk”.

And he did not say it, but it is certainly his intention, because it is the intention of everyone who wants to restore respect for the borders and for Spanish law, that audits will have to be demanded not only of Open Arms but of all these organisations that are at this moment collecting fortunes in public money to house and maintain those whom their colleagues bring in. There are many people here becoming multimillionaires. Not only by trafficking in Venezuelan oil and all manner of things through the Dominican Republic. With the refugee industry, the immigrant industry, the unaccompanied-minor industry, with delirious invoicing paid by their friends in the administration. Abascal is once again entirely right. The sinking of the Open Arms will be a fine ceremony to mark the end of the era of contempt for borders and of incentivised invasion.

To benefit this industry, society must be kept from seeing the dramas this invasion generates daily across the whole of Spain. And there exists an express will, not only in the PSOE and its communist and separatist partners but also in the PP, to protect criminals and their acts with silence or concealment because they are immigrants. Denying it makes no less clear the will to protect the traffickers of illegal immigration, especially that link in the chain which is financed by the administrations and which are the special troops of the left and the far left known as NGOs.

They are called, in what is already an act of cover-up, Non-Governmental Organisations when they are exactly the opposite: they are fully governmental organisations, financed in large part, some of them entirely, with public money.

The NGOs devote themselves to what governments want but cannot do officially and publicly. Among other things, maintaining with public money an immense network of cadres wholly identified with their leftist ideology.

Germany, as this sad case in Göttingen once again exposes, has been the pioneer in these concealments, ever since those mass rapes and assaults in Cologne under Merkel which they tried to deny even when there were hundreds of victims and witnesses. The German authorities’ will to cover up is permanent and absolute. As it has been in thousands of cases in these past years, some of them known, others not. In Germany the security that was one of the treasures of the Federal Republic since the war has collapsed. The person chiefly responsible for Germans no longer being able to live as they did before is, of course, Angela Merkel, who in September 2015, with her total opening of the borders and the colossal pull effect of her proclamation that Germany would take in everyone in need, broke the balance of German society forever.

Today many believe that all of it formed part of a plan by a Merkel who had joined the CDU after the fall of the Berlin Wall without having genuinely abjured her communist militancy, and that her opening of the borders was really an act against the German nation. She never concealed her rejection of national symbols and ceremonies, and the image in which she contemptuously removes a German flag that had slipped into the photograph after an electoral victory is famous. Among those convinced of this is the man who was her head of the secret services at the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans Georg Maassen, whom she dismissed because he debunked a journalists’ hoax about a pogrom by far-right extremists in Dresden that Merkel had made her own. Merkel did not forgive Maassen for proclaiming the truth before the media. There had been no far-right crime, which is the kind the social-democratic two-party system goes looking for. What there has been in Dresden ever since is an unceasing series of deaths of Germans at the hands of immigrants. And that the media do not trumpet as they did with the false pogrom.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in RealClearDefense. Mutual Assured Destruction Doesn’t Deter Escalate to Win)

Mutual assured destruction or MAD is not an American doctrine or military strategy. Those who believe MAD is how America deters nuclear armed adversaries assume that any use of nuclear weapons by the United States will be massive. And that any alternative such as the limited initial use of nuclear force, will quickly escalate to a full scale nuclear conflict with both attacker and retaliatory nation being destroyed. Given such assumptions, it is considered logical to assume U.S. deterrent strategy is fixed on massive retaliation and destroying most of the industry and population of our adversaries as that is the only possible use of such weapons.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, a MAD strategy was indeed considered but jettisoned by the United States some 65 years ago. For example, President Kennedy noted an all or nothing strategy made no sense: “Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy – or of a collective death-wish for the world.” Kennedy succeeded in adopting a strategy far short of all-out retaliation that came to be known as “flexible response” which in 1974 was fully developed by James Schlesinger and eventually codified in a 1980 PDD or Presidential Defense Directive 59.

Whether the United States has 10,000 or 1500 strategic nuclear weapons, our forces were designed to have a secure retaliatory capability at any level of conflict. The objective was to end any conflict as soon as possible and at the lowest level of destruction. But the U.S. goal was not to burn an adversaries cities to the ground. U.S. deterrent strategy was to hold at risk what our adversary valued—an adversary’s leadership, security forces that keep the leadership in power, key war supporting industries and the key weapons used to propel aggression.

Critics of current U.S. deterrent strategy assume that no nuclear armed adversary of the United States believes in “fighting” a nuclear war, so the U.S. should drop its long held deterrent strategy and go “back to MAD” or something like it. But at the same time, many of these same critics join the abolitionists to support a minimal number of nuclear weapons but only to “deter” but not engage in “warfighting.” If conflict breaks out and these weapons will not be used even in retaliation. This takes our nuclear deterrent off the table and reduced to only a bluff.

What then of the multiple nuclear threats by Russia over Ukraine? Such threats are often dismissed as mere bluff. Many may find this idea comforting. After all, if no nuclear armed nation has plans for the limited use of nuclear weapons, and everyone has adopted MAD, the United States need not be concerned with the nuclear balance.

Thus, the mistaken notion that the U.S. has a MAD strategy plays into the hands of Russia and China. These two nations both seek to be able to escalate or threaten to escalate in a crisis or conflict with a limited use of nuclear weapons. The objective is to get the United States to stand down and not come to the defense of her allies, a restraint to give Russia and China a strategic advantage.

Unfortunately, much of the current commentary on nuclear threats still assumes the U.S. and its adversaries maintain a mutual assured destruction strategy as the best means to avoid any use of nuclear weapons. Annie Jacobson’s recent book “On Nuclear War: A Scenario” describes mutual assured destruction strategy—which she assumes the U.S. maintains—as simply MAD or crazy. She posits that any initial use of nuclear weapons would almost automatically result in the all-out use of such weapons, leading to nuclear winter and killing billions. And as such, she calls for the entirety of American nuclear deterrence to be jettisoned.

What Jacobson ignores is that our adversaries of the West have sought military advantage through enhanced nuclear weapons. The Soviets sought to put nuclear weapons in space; then built a huge first strike missile force; then deployed thousands of medium range SS-20s to intimidate and split NATO; and most recently built a theater strike capability to keep the United States and NATO from coming to the robust defense of its allies.

The U.S. nuclear deterrent was never a one size fits all and automatically “fit for purpose.” For example, the U.S. and NATO faced a huge conventional military threat from the USSR from the beginning of the Cold War on the plains of central Europe. The Warsaw Pact tank armies were not matched by U.S. conventional forces whose cost would have bankrupted the U.S. Treasury. The alternative was an extended nuclear “umbrella” over Europe, primarily aimed at Soviet tank armies. Thus, in the initial Cold War period, the U.S. assumed a nuclear conflict would most probably grow out of an initial conventional war.

As technology improved, however, a new threat emerged: a potential Soviet pre-emptive first strike seeking to eliminate much of the U.S. nuclear extended deterrent, followed up by a subsequent conventional invasion of Europe.

In 1963, the U.S. strategic nuclear deterrent consisted of 6000 nuclear warheads while the Russians had 600 warheads. As President Kennedy remarked, this strength and particularly the newly deployed Minuteman missiles were as he said, “my ace in the hole,” that gave the United States the strategic advantage that peacefully ended the Cuban missile crisis.

However, by the time the next decade ended, the 1972 SALT “arms control” treaty process allowed the USSR to deploy 7800 warheads compared to the U.S. force of 8700 warheads, (revealed by a 1983 DoD Net Assessment.) Most worrisome were 3000 highly accurate SS-18 missile warheads, with the overall Soviet nuclear force projected to grow to over 24,000 warheads by 1993. As Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird told Congress in 1974, “the Soviets are going for a first strike force and there is no doubt about it.” The SS-18 eventually did indeed hold at risk the entirety of the U.S. land-based ICBMs, the only highly accurate U.S. deterrent force, leaving the U.S. without the ability to hold at risk key Soviet assets.

This perceived imbalance was known as the “window of vulnerability” and leave U.S. leaders exactly where President Kennedy had previously worried would be the case. The U.S. solved the strategic equation of the window of vulnerability—the USSR empire was brought down. The U.S. deployed the accurate D-5 submarine launched missile and Peacekeeper land based ICBM to its deterrent, the Soviet SS-20s were banned by treaty, SDI was initiated, and the START arms control process brought Russian warheads down to under 2000, a near 80% reduction.

In April 1999 Russia’s President Yeltsin decreed that Moscow develop highly accurate, small, low yield, battlefield useful nuclear weapons. And as former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Hyten warned decades ago, these nuclear weapons were designed precisely to “escalate to win” a conventional conflict or crisis between Moscow and Washington.

Putin thinks the U.S. will not want to risk escalation and the possible massive use of nuclear weapons. That is why Putin has made exactly these threats over NATO’s intervention in the war against Ukraine. The previous administration stood down and did not provide Ukraine the needed military capability to effectively take the fight to Moscow. In addition, Russia assumes the relative weak U.S. theater nuclear forces cannot deter escalatory threats from Moscow. This point was emphasized by the 2023 Strategic Posture Commission report in laying out the opening of what could be described as a new window of vulnerability.

The U.S. is indeed now developing a greater theater nuclear deterrent to close the technology gap. However, simply improving conventional deterrent would not be sufficient. As the U.S. military has repeatedly emphasized, if adversarial nuclear forces are introduced into a conventional conflict, the assumed U.S. advantage “does not hold.” In short, the U.S. conventional military advantage disappears.

In conclusion, the central tenets of mutual assured destruction no longer apply as MAD itself has long been jettisoned. More importantly, our adversaries believe the actual first use of nuclear weapons must no longer be assumed to be taboo. That is the new threat that must be deterred by the U.S. and its allies. The dilemma is that the U.S. needs time to resolve this theater deterrent shortfall but the aggression calendar of our adversaries may not necessarily wait until completed.

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

Let me be clear, I have firm views on illegal immigration. In cases where illegal immigrants are convicted of serious violent crimes such as murder or rape, I believe the penalties should be as severe as possible, including the death penalty. For non-violent offenses, taxpayers should not have to shoulder the cost of long-term incarceration—swift deportation is the better and more practical solution. My concerns about sanctuary cities, however, are less about immigration status and far more about the policies that govern criminal justice. The real threat to public safety is both in how these cities manage offenders—by releasing repeat and violent criminals regardless of status—and in the reality that many among the undocumented population do add to criminality and recidivism. While some migrants seek a better life, data from federal agencies shows that thousands of illegals are arrested or convicted each year for a range of offenses, including serious crimes such as assault, weapons violations, and homicide. With criminal aliens representing a substantial share of ICE removals, their presence and the criminal acts of a subset within this group are pressing concerns when it comes to urban safety.

In practice, the cities most affected by rising crime and recidivism are those led predominantly by Democratic state and local governments. Policy changes—including the removal of California’s Three Strikes law, the abandonment of Broken Windows policing in New York, the reduction or outright elimination of Qualified Immunity for police, and the implementation of cashless bail—have dramatically weakened accountability. Habitual and violent offenders, including those here illegally, know the consequences for repeated offenses are now much less severe. The withdrawal from Broken Windows policing, once credited with the steep drop in New York’s violent crime throughout the 1990s, has instead allowed an environment in which lower-level crimes are ignored, often opening the door to more major criminal acts. Cashless bail policies compounded the issue by creating a revolving door for repeat offenders—many with extensive criminal records—who are arrested and released within hours, only to offend again. Poorly conceived policies in Democrat-run states have enabled rising rates of recidivism, undermining progress made in reducing crime.

The role of governmental policy is directly matched by the impact of the criminal element within the undocumented population. Federal data for 2025 confirms that a meaningful percentage of illegal aliens have been arrested or convicted for more serious crimes, and these numbers are felt most strongly in the urban centers where law enforcement practices are most constrained by progressive policies. Even as some studies show that immigrants overall may not commit more crimes than native-born Americans, the criminal activity of a subset of migrants remains a stubborn reality in shaping the frequency and severity of recidivism.

This dynamic is best seen in New York City, where the mayoral race is being shaped by policy proposals widely considered radical. Frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, supported by progressive groups and running on a Democratic Socialist platform, has publicly pledged to abolish punishments for misdemeanors altogether, stating the city’s police should not waste resources on enforcing minor crimes like theft or shoplifting under $1,000, drug possession, assault without weapons, or drunk driving. According to the New York Post, Mamdani declared, “While police play a vital role, we are currently depending on them to address the shortcomings of our social safety net, which hinders their ability to perform their actual duties”. Local critics warned his proposals would operate as “an E-ZPass for criminals,” encouraging repeated offending while eroding the fundamental sense of order for law-abiding residents. New Yorkers like Chelsea resident Alexander Kaplan have responded, to the New York Post with disbelief: “It’s just difficult to imagine how adults in their right mind could come up with it. I’m not exaggerating, I’m completely serious,” he said. “We’re already suffering from terrible crime. This is going to make it a thousand times worse. And perception matters – just the notion of this would embolden criminals.” If elected, Mamdani could instruct the NYPD to deprioritize such arrests or pressure district attorneys to refrain from prosecuting certain cases, echoing controversial strategies employed in other cities.

While some urban areas struggle with these progressive policy experiments, President Trump’s recent takeover of Washington, DC’s public safety response and the expanded role of the National Guard have produced striking results in the fight against urban crime. By assuming control of the city’s police department and deploying 800 National Guard members, Trump announced, “I am announcing a historic initiative to save our nation’s capital from crime, chaos, disorder, and destitution”. Since federal intervention, the city recorded an unprecedented streak—13 days without a murder—an achievement widely hailed as a historic turnaround for a city previously plagued by gun violence and high homicide rates. According to The Hill, between August 14 and August 26, 2025, Washington, DC saw zero homicides, with just two murders documented since Trump’s assumption of police control on August 11, underscoring the impact of federal oversight and enhanced security protocols.

The broader impact includes a 22% drop in overall violent crime since the National Guard’s arrival, with robberies down by 46%, carjackings down 83%, and car thefts by 21%. Trump’s repeated emphasis has been clear: “We are witnessing a situation of utter lawlessness … this is liberation day in D.C., and we will reclaim our capital”. He has hinted at plans to expand this model to other cities, arguing, “Consider the murder rate in D.C.; it compares with some of the most dangerous cities globally. … In just ten days, crime has decreased by over 35 percent in the capital, thanks to Donald J. Trump’s actions”.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro has strongly endorsed these aggressive measures. On Fox News, Pirro said, “We’re not going to tolerate crime that is out of control in the nation’s capital … This is the shining city on the hill that our forefathers talked about … and in the end, it is an incredibly violent area”. Pirro dismissed official narratives that crime is down, pointing to the real victims and their families, and said, “You tell the mother of the intern who was shot going out for McDonald’s near the Washington Convention Center, ‘Oh, crime is down’”. She advocated for tough city and youth sentencing laws to ensure dangerous offenders are properly removed from the streets.

President Trump’s initiative in Washington, DC stands as a rare example of federal action producing rapid and significant reductions in violent crime. As national debates rage over lenient policies, cashless bail, and proposals to decriminalize misdemeanors—like those advanced by New York City mayoral frontrunner Mamdani—the dramatic improvements in DC offer a glimpse of what robust enforcement and expanded law enforcement roles can achieve for public safety. The lessons are clear: poorly constructed policies by Democrat-led state and city governments, paired with the documented criminal element among illegal entrants—and advocates pushing for even greater leniency—remain central reasons for persistent recidivism and the rise of crime in America’s urban centers, while strong deterrence and accountability are crucial for reversing these trends.

Eli M. Gold is the president of the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington, DC based think-and-do tank.

(This article was written by Adelle Nazarian and appeared in The Western Journal. The Persian Puzzle: Why Understanding Iran’s Ancient Identity May Hold the Key to Peace)

Since the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, no Arab state has dared to confront Israel militarily. The wars have not disappeared — they’ve simply changed hands. Since 2006, Iran has taken the lead in orchestrating hostilities against Israel, not through direct confrontation, but through proxy warfare and ideological manipulation, engineering rage on the Arab street while cloaking its ambitions in sacred garb.

Iran’s Sejjil missile — its name meaning “shards hurled at the deviant” — is emblematic of a regime encased in theological obsession and ritualistic hostility. From alleyway slogans to the polished rhetoric of Tehran’s clerical elite, the Islamic Republic has built a political theology upon the bones of religious grievance. To understand Iran, one must look not just to its nuclear program or sanctions evasion schemes, but to its enduring existential mythology. A radical reorientation of this spiritual architecture — not mere regime change — is the only path to sustainable peace.

For all its strategic rationality, Iran’s foreign policy is ultimately anchored in a dualistic and apocalyptic worldview. Islamic eschatology casts Jews in a disparaging role, and the rebirth of Israel in 1948 triggered something deeper than geopolitical anxiety — it reawakened an ancient wound. Among the Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Islam often battle for narrative dominance, but both maintain a complicated, even subconscious, struggle with Judaism. Iran’s animus toward Israel is as much metaphysical as it is material.

But to truly decode Iran, we must move even further back — beyond Islam, beyond even Zoroastrianism — into a forgotten fraternal conflict with Vedic Hinduism.

This is where the Persian puzzle begins to unravel. Zoroastrianism, long assumed to be Iran’s spiritual foundation, may in fact be a counter-narrative — an ideological reaction to Persia’s traumatic break from the Vedic world. The 4th-century Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus records in “Rerum Gestarum”:

“When Zoroaster had boldly made his way into the unknown regions of Upper India, he came to a certain woody retreat, of which, with its tranquil silence the Brahmins, men of sublime genius, were the possessors. From their teaching he learnt the principles of the motion of the world and of the stars, and the pure rites of sacrifice… and of what he learnt he infused some portion into the minds of the Magi.”

This account suggests what few dare to explore: that Persia’s foundational theology was not born ex nihilo, but was grafted from its Vedic cousins and reformulated through a lens of imperial ambition. Bereft of its spiritual kinship with India, Persia compensated by building an empire of priestcraft and tribal confederation, reaching east and west to forge a new spiritual identity rooted in messianism and separation.

The West’s enduring hope that fissures in Iran’s regime will somehow usher in liberal reform reveals a profound misunderstanding of Persian political theology. What we see in Iran today is not just clerical authoritarianism — it’s a civilizational mirror of India’s own sacred governance, albeit one stripped of pluralism.

Iran’s Ayatollah-led system is an anomaly in the Islamic world. It resembles more closely the Hindu tradition of the philosopher-king, where the sage, not the soldier, leads. Only the most credentialed religious scholars — those with standing in law, theology, and public service — are permitted to sit on the Guardian Council. The Supreme Leader is not a monarch but a jurist-king elected for life, in accordance with ancient notions of divine stewardship. It’s as if the soul of the Mahabharata lingers in Tehran’s corridors of power.

The Combatant Clergy Association — simultaneously pious and paramilitary — echoes the Yajurvedic archetype of the warrior-priest. Their embedded influence in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps makes them resilient to internal coups, and their financial oversight inoculates the state against oligarchic capture. The likely heirs to Khamenei’s throne all emerge from this sacred-military class.

Khomeini’s romantic ideal of a “Guardianship of Love” is institutionalized in the Basij, Iran’s youth volunteer force. Structurally and spiritually, it mirrors India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the world’s largest grassroots movement. Even Iran’s flag bears resemblance to the khanda, the Sikh emblem — a spiritual offshoot of Hinduism. That’s no coincidence: Khomeini’s ancestors migrated from India in 1834. The Indo-Persian entanglement is more than historical — it’s foundational.

Yet for all its ideological scaffolding, Iran’s theocracy is haunted by spiritual discontent. It mimics the Vedic hierarchy but lacks its inner light. Its ritualism is brittle, its orthodoxy exhausted. What remains is an ossified version of what once aspired to be transcendent.

Many Iranians tattoo the Faravahar, a Zoroastrian symbol borrowed from the Assyrian deity Ashur, as a gesture of national pride. But it is rarely a call to spiritual renewal. In post-Soviet Tajikistan — another Persianate society — Zoroastrian revivalism failed to animate the soul. It’s an identity marker, not a messianic spark.

Nietzsche confessed to his confidant Johann Heinrich Koselitz (also known by his pen name Peter Gast) that “Thus Spake Zarathustra” was, at its core, an ode to Manu — the ancient Hindu lawgiver particularly known for the Manusmriti, a foundational text on Dharma. That legacy survives in Iran, not through faith, but through yearning. Ever since its rupture from the Vedic order, Iran has been in search of its messiah, its redeemer, its ideological lodestar. One after another — Zoroaster, Khomeini, now perhaps Khamenei’s successors — Iran attaches itself to prophets, not principles.

Today, in the religious underground, serious seekers no longer look to the imams. They are turning to Buddhism. To Hinduism. To the East.

Western efforts to introduce religious streams into Iran that are disconnected from Iran’s earliest spiritual tradition remain largely symbolic. They grasp at the low-hanging fruit, not the roots.

If the United States truly hopes to break the cycle of Iran’s ideological war on Israel and the West, it must broker something far more radical: a spiritual reconciliation, not with the West, but with the East. With the civilizational family from which it once exiled itself.

Only by reawakening Iran’s kinship with its Vedic past can we redirect its vast spiritual energy away from destruction and toward renewal. Such a return may usher in a golden age of peace — or ignite a new crisis of identity. Either way, it won’t be Washington’s or Jerusalem’s war to fight.

It will be India’s.

Adelle Nazarian is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

This article first appeared on Human Events https://humanevents.com/2025/08/21/shea-bradley-farrell-trump-has-world-leaders-at-his-fingertips-in-his-fight-for-peace)

The recent White House peace summit between President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and seven key European world leaders did not just pave the way for a lasting peace settlement in the Russia-Ukraine War — it firmly established Donald Trump as the most consequential and impactful President of the United States since FDR.

Reports that the seven world leaders came as “bodyguards” to “shield” Zelensky from an “unfair and perilous settlement” are laughable. No, the leaders of Europe – NATO, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Finland – were summoned by Trump to serve his pro-peace agenda and to be instructed by him. Their presence was contingent only on his approval. “When I made the call, they came,” Trump said. “They have respect for our country again … we’ve become the hottest country anywhere in the world.”

Photos of the European leaders in the Oval Office certainly didn’t shout “bodyguards” – but rather whipped subordinates slumping in chairs surrounding the boss’s desk, awaiting their instructions. Power play by Trump? Yes, and these “leaders” deserve it – not one in the past three and a half years tried to negotiate peace for a war in their backyard, not once. No, instead, they enabled and encouraged the war to continue.

Under their Russia-Ukraine policies, a million and a half Europeans have died, Ukrainian infrastructure is devastated, energy crises crippled Europe’s economy, and China and Russia are stronger allies. Instead of calling for peace, these European leaders have cynically used Ukraine and the war to fuel their failing “war economy.”

Indeed, the majority came to Washington, D.C., hoping to convince Trump to continue the war (through stringent NATO security guarantees to Ukraine, unacceptable to Putin) and to encourage Zelenskyy to keep fighting. Trump was diplomatic and courteous but maintained his strong position to bring an end to the war, with a compromise on both sides. Media portrayals of European leaders’ agency in “confronting Trump” are ridiculous and contaminated with lingering Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).

President Trump’s success at negotiations between Zelenskyy and Putin, though slower than desired (including by Trump himself), is historic and should be met worldwide with praise, relief, and gratitude.

Zelenskyy, who never came to D.C. before without asking for more weapons, more money, more war, actually said he now supports Trump bringing an end to the war through diplomacy. He is also willing for Trump to organize a trilateral meeting between him, Trump, and Putin, which the White House says Putin agreed to. All of these concessions were unthinkable, even a month or two ago.

Zelenskyy has even said he is open to “land swaps” to end the war, using current front-line borders (including Ukrainian territory captured by Russia since 2022) as the starting point. Amazing, considering Zelenskyy declared for more than three years that only a full Russian surrender of captured territory (including Crimea, taken in 2014) would be acceptable. Zelenskyy even seems to have given up his bid to enter NATO.

Finally, a path for peace has been forged, though it will take more time, patience, and negotiation to reach a final deal. Trump has gained the trust of both Zelenskyy and Putin, Putin having even acquiesced to meet on U.S. soil to discuss peace with Trump in Alaska, three days before the summit.

No one can predict the final outcome, but Trump’s current position is (1) Ceasefire is preferable to stop deaths, but negotiations will continue regardless. (2) The U.S. no longer is “giving anything” (having given at least $200 billion under former President Joe Biden). Still, it is selling the best military equipment on earth to Europe, to give to Ukraine as they wish. (3) Ukraine’s NATO membership is still off the table, but (4) the U.S. will back security guarantees for Ukraine (beyond the previous rare earth minerals deal) where Europe maintains “the first line of defense,” with no U.S. boots on the ground. Still to be hashed out is how close security guarantees will appear to NATO military operations (Zelenskyy wants weapons, training, intelligence, etc.), which will certainly be a sticking point for Putin. Trump sees U.S. security guarantees as necessary to “getting the deal done.”

Number (5) will be the hardest for those who still don’t understand the realities of Ukraine’s situation and what it will take to end the war: territorial concessions on both sides (including Ukraine, the non-aggressor yet “loser”) are likely. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says that “both sides are going to have to give, and both sides should expect to get something.” Putin wants the “fortress belt” in the western part of Donetsk province that he failed to capture, but he is not likely to get it.

Less than one year ago, under Biden and in anticipation of a Kamala Harris presidency, the U.S. planned to support another Ukraine counteroffensive this year, having signed a commitment with Zelenskyy with fixed levels of support for ten years. Throughout the war, Biden sent more and more lethal weapons to Ukraine, escalating the war towards a worldwide disaster. No discussion of “peace negotiations,” just another American “forever war” draining America’s coffers without tangible benefit to actual American taxpayers.

Thankfully, Donald Trump has the wisdom and leadership strength to put a hard stop to anything not in America’s interest. He continues to hammer out a monument of accomplishments on a huge scale and with a rapid pace that infuriates and demoralizes the Left — all while restoring the firm foundation and hope of American greatness that the vast majority of Americans (and our allies) crave.

Dishonest portraits painted by the Left demonizing and downplaying Trump’s peace negotiations are especially ironic given that Trump had nothing to do with provoking this war; nor with former President Barack Obama giving Crimea to Russia, weakening Ukraine; nor with Biden promising Ukraine NATO membership against previous U.S. promises (which Trump warned him about); nor Biden signaling to Putin that a “minor incursion” would be acceptable. Yet as Trump said, “We wanna get it ended … we’re going to have a lasting peace.”

Trump has tirelessly worked to end the bloodshed in Ukraine and the bleeding of American taxpayer money while working to create peace in multiple international conflicts— Armenia-Azerbaijan, Cambodia-Thailand, Congo-Rwanda, India-Pakistan, Israel-Iran, and more. Even in his first eight months, Trump’s status as the World Leader is unparalleled, cementing him as an international figure of consequence and vision far beyond the years of his presidency.

But, as Trump says, speaking about the mainstream media: “the level of hatred and animosity is unbelievable … I’ve solved major wars… that have been going on for 35 and 37 [years] and a couple of quicker ones… but they don’t even write about that. No matter what I do … no matter what deal I make … they’ll say, ‘Trump was absolutely horrible.’ And I’ve lived with that for a long time.” He pauses to consider, “But I won in a landslide … so the people … are the only ones that count, ultimately.”

Over seventy-seven million people, Mr. President. Thank you for making the U.S.A. the greatest and “hottest” nation on earth, once again.

Shea Bradley-Farrell, Ph.D. is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington, D.C. based think-and-do tank.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Fraude y fracaso alemán)

The general degradation of politics and administration in Germany generates stupefaction even among those who have been warning for many years, for several decades, that the policy of systematic social democratic consensus between what were until recently the two great German parties, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), was leading irremediably to failure. Germany is today a country radically different from the one that existed from the economic miracle of the 1950s until 2015, although even then it had already been for years on the path of this misfortune.

Because it soon became apparent that the initially so celebrated Grosse Koalition, to which the Greens and the Liberals later attached themselves in various governments, led to a coordination of the interests of them all that prevented necessary reforms, generated obstinacy in maintaining mistaken policies and ended in corruption and failure. There was no opposition. And without a real opposition there is no correction of policy.

Thus unthinkable things have happened, and not only aberrant decisions in law such as approving a constitutional reform after the elections with the parliament that preceded them, because the composition of the new one had not permitted it. That kind of banana-republic manoeuvre is mixed with a runaway inefficiency in transport and in federal, state and municipal social services and with a corruption previously unthinkable.

There are incredible scandals such as the one that has just broken: the Federal Statistical Office now announces that it has been systematically “getting it wrong” in its quarterly GDP growth figures and that in reality things have been far worse. According to the official information, in 2023 GDP did not fall by 0.2% but by 0.9%, and in 2014 it was not 0.3% but 0.6%. We are talking about many billions of euros. The “errors” of the Federal Statistical Office have of course favoured the Government, the one of that time and the one of today.

The cosmetic treatment of the fall in GDP in 2023 favoured the parties of the previous Government ahead of the elections. And the cosmetic treatment of the 2024 result favours the present government because it will be easier for it to improve upon. In any case, the policy that Friedrich Merz of the CDU is practising in coalition with the SPD really differs in nothing from the previous Government with the Greens and the Liberals, led by the SPD with Olaf Scholz as chancellor, which ended in terrible failure and early elections. As you can see, four parties involved in various combinations in the various governments, all with the same basically social democratic policy that Angela Merkel already imposed in her 16 catastrophic years.

The basic social democratic consensus prevents anything previously done from being called into question. So with all these governments the same immigration policy has been pursued, with brutal consequences for security and quality of life, the same energy policy that has sunk the economy and impoverished society as a whole, the same labour policy that has sunk productivity and, above all, the environmental policy, converted into the ideological totem that automatically eradicates all rationality from the decisions that are taken.

Since the abyss between the reality lived by Germans and the message and the rhetoric of the consensus parties has not stopped growing, the moment has arrived in which all the parties included in it are losing support and only one party is rising, the one that is radically different and that emerged precisely to fill that vacuum left by the absence of opposition, and which according to the latest polls is already the first party, the AfD.

Once a real opposition was finally generated with the AfD, all the parties of the social democratic consensus agreed to brand it far-right and extremist in order to ignore it, to impose a cordon sanitaire, to refuse all cooperation and contact and thus to go on functioning as if that new party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), did not exist. And so they went on governing as if that opposition did not exist.

However, the AfD not only did not cease to exist but has grown without pause until today it is already the first party in Germany, two points ahead of the CDU and doubling the result of the third, which is the SPD. The logical thing would have been that, after the last elections in which the CDU came first and the AfD second, with a brutal failure for the entire left, the first two should have formed a coalition of a new type, clearly on the right, which could have carried out all the reforms of the follies committed that nobody in the CDU denies to be necessary.

But since the boycott of the AfD by all the parties of the social democratic consensus continues, and the CDU persists in keeping itself shut inside that pen with the losing left, the only possible Government after the elections was the one that is now in its death throes, having done nothing but aggravate the situation. September approaches like a black cloud for a Government that the immense majority of Germans consider incapable and already disqualified.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Adelle Nazarian and appeared in The Western Journal. Sudan: Where the Abraham Accords Face Their Fiercest Trial)

The Abraham Accords represented a bold recalibration of Middle East diplomacy — driven by American resolve, regional pragmatism, and the Trump administration’s unapologetic prioritization of national interests over ideological dogma. Nowhere was that shift more transformative than in Sudan, where decades of hostility toward Israel were giving way to cautious engagement, economic vision, and a growing appetite for regional integration.

That momentum has since faltered. Under the Biden administration, the strategic clarity that once defined U.S. Middle East policy dissipated. Sudan has been engulfed in civil war, and Washington’s response has been incoherent — marked by ambivalence, moral grandstanding, and a misguided faith in discredited secular elites now aligned with the very forces destabilizing the country.

Roughly one-third of the way through this descent, a critical voice has emerged. In a recent article published by The Times of Israel, journalist Gavin Serkin offers the clearest account yet of how the Sudan-Israel normalization track was derailed — not by popular rejection, but by geopolitical naiveté and diplomatic short-sightedness. Serkin laid bare the contradictions at the heart of Western policy: While Sudan’s army fights to preserve the nation’s territorial integrity, it is the Rapid Support Forces — implicated in mass atrocities — that have found indirect favor through silence and strategic neglect. Among the RSF’s reported backers is the UAE, a country whose strategic interests in Sudan reflect broader efforts to contain instability — though the outcomes of such alignments now warrant scrutiny, Serkin asserted. The UAE denies supporting the RSF militarily and financially.

Notably, the UAE has also been a pioneering leader in advancing regional peace through its role in the Abraham Accords, demonstrating its broader commitment to reshaping Middle East diplomacy through normalization and economic integration. This duality — of visionary regional leadership on one hand and complex entanglements on the other — sets the stage for a most symbolic and troubling episodes Serkin explored.

Though Sudan did not ink its name alongside the UAE, Bahrain, or Morocco, its alignment with the Abraham Accords was no less historic. In 2020, under intense diplomatic pressure and with the promise of removal from the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list, Sudan’s transitional leaders agreed in principle to normalize relations with Israel — a bold, if tenuous, leap forward. This decision was not merely transactional; it represented a flicker of geopolitical maturity amid a fragile nation’s search for identity and integration. In early 2023, that flicker was reignited as Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen met with General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Khartoum, signaling an intent to formalize ties. But weeks later, Sudan descended into civil war. The normalization process — never codified, never ratified — was suspended in midair. Sudan’s place in the Abraham Accords now hangs between vision and void, shaped not only by international will, but by whether the world chooses to engage with the Sudan of today.

Serkin highlighted a devastating symbolic moment: the Israeli foreign minister’s visit to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan just weeks before the war began, followed by near-total silence from Jerusalem as RSF militias ransacked communities and committed unspeakable crimes. That silence has not gone unnoticed. As former Sudanese diplomat Mekki Elmograbi notes in the piece, it felt like being “stabbed in the back.” Such optics have the power to destroy trust.

It appears that writer Serkin chose Mekki Elmograbi to express the sense of shock because Mekki was the first to openly lead a Sudanese-Israeli discussion at the Moshe Dayan Center, representing a reasonable and candid voice from Sudan.

A very important article was recently published in the Wall Street Journal by the French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy, who is well known for his support of Israel — but this time, the article came from an unexpected location: Sudan itself, during a field tour with General Al-Burhan, including counterterrorism forces base where he witnessed preparation for operations against extremists.

In the article, the philosopher and author Bernard delivered an important message from Al-Burhan: that he is willing to continue with the Abraham Accords, but emphasized that a parliament must be in place to ratify the agreement. This can only happen through cooperation with the legitimate government currently under Burhan’s leadership, especially now after appointing a civilian prime minister, Professor Kamil El-Tayeb Idris.

Bernard’s article, titled “Sudan’s Brutal, Forgotten War,” was the result of an investigative trip, reminiscent of his earlier work, including the film “The Oath of Tobruk,” based on his field visits to the uprising in Libya against Moammar Gaddafi.

The miscalculation at the heart of current Western — and to some degree, Israeli — policy is the belief that normalization can be orchestrated behind closed doors, as if Sudan were frozen in time. But Sudan is not static. Its center of gravity has shifted. The army, led by Burhan, retains legitimacy and controls vast portions of the country. Intelligence chief General Ibrahim Mufaddal is now a key counterterrorism partner for Europe. He led successful intelligence diplomacy in Europe and across the region. The reality on the ground has moved on, even as policymakers remain stuck in outdated frameworks.

Worse still is the insistence on treating normalization as a reward for ideological conformity. The fiction that only secular elites are “safe” partners has collapsed. Many of these actors sided with the RSF and lost their mandate. Meanwhile, elements within Sudan’s Islamic and traditional sectors — including some previously opposed to normalization — have grown more pragmatic. They see engagement with Israel not as a betrayal, but as a path to sovereignty and survival.

Sudan is not merely a participant in the Abraham Accords framework — it is, in many ways, their crucible. Unlike the Gulf monarchies whose normalization with Israel was driven by economic pragmatism and shared security interests, Sudan’s engagement was forged in the fires of post-revolutionary flux, where legitimacy is fragile, institutions fractured, and sovereignty contested. If normalization can endure amid Sudan’s civil war, ideological fragmentation, and regional interference, it would affirm the Accords not as a transactional detente, but as a durable architecture for peace — capable of transcending regime type and surviving the volatility of the modern Middle East.

Sudan’s successful normalization with Israel could inspire hesitant African and Arab states, like Algeria or Tunisia, to reconsider their stance, amplifying the Accords’ regional ripple effect and demonstrating that peace can thrive even in complex, post-conflict environments. But if it collapses here, it signals something far more sobering: The promise of Arab-Israeli reconciliation may be confined to boardrooms and strongmen, unable to take root where democratic pluralism or popular agency remain in play. Sudan, therefore, is not the exception — it is the proving ground.

To frame this as “Islamist vs. secularist” is to fundamentally misunderstand the stakes. The normalization process must be decoupled from regime change agendas. Peace with Israel should be a national decision, not the prize of a narrow elite. It must reflect Sudanese realities — not Western preferences.

The danger now is clear: By sidelining real actors on the ground and clinging to failed proxies, the West risks pushing Sudan deeper into chaos and driving normalization into irrelevance. Worse, it risks allowing extremism to reassert itself under the banner of betrayed nationalism.

If the Abraham Accords are to mean anything in Sudan, they must be reclaimed. That means re-engaging with Burhan and national institutions — not because they are perfect, but because they are real. It means abandoning the fantasy that peace can be imposed from abroad and, instead, empowering Sudanese voices to shape their own future — through dialogue, inclusion, and respect for sovereignty.

It was bold leadership that launched the Abraham Accords. It will take bold leadership again to rescue them in Sudan.

Adelle Nazarian is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.