(This article was written by Shea Bradley-Farrell and appeared in Human Events. Under Trump foreign policy is a return to sovereignty for the US and global nations)

President Donald Trump has disrupted the decades-long accepted status quo of U.S. foreign policy, bringing about positive change in U.S.-foreign relations. But while any change can be uncomfortable, Trump’s drastic cut of irrelevant foreign aid and his laissez-faire sovereigntist approach to foreign policy has sent many “experts” rushing to fetch the smelling salts.

Context for Trump’s actions is needed.

I first realized the importance of actively protecting both U.S. national sovereignty and the sovereignty of other countries during the Obama administration. At that time, I was a professional in international development in Africa and the Middle East. I was shocked to uncover through my research that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spent billions of taxpayer dollars funding Leftist NGOs to promote “sexual orientation and gender identity” (SOGI) ideologies, abortion, and other programs that interfered in foreign elections and politics. And most Americans had no idea.

This was the agenda of the Deep State and liberal Left, not of the American people. Yet, anti-American sentiment was growing worldwide.

Later, as I built an international affairs department as vice president of a Washington, D.C. policy organization, I was frequently approached by members of parliament from Central Europe, ambassadors from South America, religious leaders from Africa, and United Nations (UN) delegates from all over the world, asking for help against these so-called U.S. foreign “aid” programs. They were often afraid to refuse programs that (in their own words) trampled on their sovereignty, cultural beliefs, and religious freedom, simply because U.S. money would also be withheld.

During President Trump’s first term, I took proof of these programs to the U.S. Congress, the White House, and the State Department. For example, a USAID-UN joint initiative for school children taught LGBT principles – like the program “Purple My School” (the color of transgenders) within the broader initiatives “Being LGBT in Asia” and “Being LGBT in Eastern Europe.” I also obtained USAID curriculum that encouraged trainees to measure their gender or sexual identity “feelings” on a daily scale, complete with pictures of transgenders. These were only a couple of examples.

Although many Congress members agreed that these programs (no matter their position on LGBTQ activism) had no business in U.S. foreign aid, few had the courage or will to stop the funding.

During this time, I also learned from collaboration with the Hungarian embassy in D.C. that the leadership of the European Union had little regard for the sovereignty of conservative-based nations, particularly the family-based, traditional countries of Central Europe.

A picture of modern-day colonialism emerged: Western governments and organizations still believe that power and wealth grant them ultimate decision-making authority over smaller, poorer, and less developed countries. All in the name of “aid and assistance.”

However, when I visited Hungary later, in 2019, to speak at the Demographic Summit, I learned that no matter how hard they are pushed, Hungarians will never relinquish their national identity or the ability to make their own decisions. In fact, I wrote a book about this, titled “Last Warning to the West: Hungary’s Triumph Over Communism and the Woke Agenda,” published by the Center for Fundamental Rights in Budapest.

During research for the book, I interviewed a young Hungarian law student whose words to me summed up Hungarian national identity and resonated with me as an American. He said, “Fighting for our sovereignty is our identity.”

His simple words described how Hungarians overcame a thousand years of war, occupation, and oppression – from Mongols, Ottoman Turks, Habsburgs, German Nazis, and Soviet Russians – to remain Hungarian firmly. His words also described how Hungarians still fight today against the biased political elite of the European Union, who will not recognize Hungary’s right to refuse to support the ongoing, costly Russia-Ukraine war, radical gender ideologies, mass unchecked immigration, and foreign political and election interference.

In fact, for refusing EU pressure, Hungary has received public and unjust labels of “authoritarian” and “democratic backsliding” and sanctions of billions of dollars for so-called violations of the “rule of law.” What a load of bunk.

President Trump, in his first administration, emphasized the importance of respecting others’ national identity at the 2018 UN General Assembly. He said, “Each of us here today is the emissary of a distinct culture, a rich history, and a people bound together by ties of memory, tradition, and the values that make our homelands like nowhere else on earth. … I honour the right of every nation in this room to pursue its customs, beliefs, and traditions.”

To their credit, I worked with the first Trump administration to create a more focused and sovereignist approach to foreign policy and aid. But for USAID, it was too little, too late. USAID’s corrupt framework remained when former President Joe Biden took office, and his USAID was like the Obama administration’s on steroids — including funding Hamas and transgender ballroom dancing in Peru. What a disgrace.

I was also astonished by the overt antagonism shown by the Biden administration towards the 1,000-year-old nation-state of Hungary. Former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman, like EU politicians, routinely tried to humiliate Hungarians for making sovereign decisions, especially their position on the “big three” of war, gender, and migration.

Samantha Powers, then chief of USAID, arrogantly vowed to protect her version of “rule of law” in Hungary, based on radical leftist concepts. Since Powers mainly met with liberal opposition in Hungary, including LGBT rights activists, her moves were considered preparatory for “a color revolution” by the Hungarian government and conservative media.

Anti-American sentiment in Hungary, our NATO ally, may have reached an all-time high.

It was clear that in his first term, President Trump understood the importance of protecting national sovereignty; however, he now recognizes the urgency of this issue.

Recently, in Saudi Arabia, he outlined a very different approach to foreign policy and aid, criticizing decades of reckless Western intervention. He said that the “so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built,” and that the interventionalists, neocons, and liberal nonprofits intervened in “complex societies that they didn’t even understand themselves.” On the other hand, he applauded the prosperity of the high-tech, industrial “modern Middle East” built by the people of the region themselves, who are developing “sovereign countries” and pursuing their “own unique visions” in their way. He also noted that their success did not come from rejecting their heritage, but rather from embracing their national traditions.

And he is right.

President Trump has addressed a decades-long problem in U.S. foreign relations, where overzealousness, ignorance, and arrogance often cause the U.S. to push beyond healthy boundaries, disregarding our partners’ heritage, culture, and experiences. Don’t misunderstand—we are proud to be American. We must defend our heritage. But we can be partners — even leaders — without being unbendable, unteachable, or uncompromising. We do not need to be involved in every war, conflict, and situation.

Thankfully, today, Trump’s foreign policy focuses on what is important: defending America, supporting our allies, and promoting “the fundamental interest of stability, prosperity, and peace.” These should always be the goals of U.S. foreign policy, not reckless interference in foreign domestic affairs or taking on problems that are not our own.

Trump’s “Peace Through Strength” coupled with his “Peace Through Prosperity” is a realistic approach to foreign policy. It promotes strong American leadership, but is rooted in mutually beneficial economic relationships, serving as the foundation for negotiating international peace and stability. The Abraham Accords of the first Trump administration are clear proof that mutual economic interest can overcome even strong ideological differences.

For example, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which refused to recognize Israel as a sovereign state, did, however, acknowledge the wisdom of joining a trade agreement with Israel—and to its great advantage. In 2020, before the Accords, Israel-UAE bilateral trade was $180 million; by 2021, it had exceeded $1 billion.

Now, however, the Trump administration is criticised for being more interested in making money than promoting foundational American values. But this is objectively not true.

President Trump had no problem confronting South African President Cyril Ramaphosa about the reported genocide of Boer farmers. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly rebuked the German government’s politically-motivated oppression of opposition party Alternative für Deutschland, saying it was “tyranny in disguise.” U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech in Munich made quite a stir when he called out the self-centered politicians orchestrating the decline of free speech in Europe and the use of lawfare against political opponents.

And true to his word, President Trump uncovered USAID’s corruption and (to quote Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary) the “covert agents, shadow institutions, money laundering machinery, and the funding of politics and politicians in foreign countries.” As Orban stated, “The whole Soros Empire is standing naked before us.”

After years of frustration from the lack of response I received from U.S. leadership about the corruption of USAID, the Trump administration (in only a few months) reduced the mammoth machine to about 18% of its former funding and put what was left under the authority of the State Department. They also removed DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), otherwise known as extreme “wokeism,” from the U.S. Department of Defense, which directly affects relations with foreign partners in U.S. security cooperation.

These changes are all to the U.S. advantage: promoting national sovereignty through U.S. foreign policy improves our public diplomacy and image around the world, works to maintain the respect of our allies and adversaries, and guards U.S. taxpayers by making sure that foreign policy reflects the will of the people, not an extreme Leftist political ideology.

And while the sovereignty of other nations is important to this administration, thankfully, in direct contrast to Joe Biden, so is the sovereignty of the United States. This is why President Trump, in his first 100 days, reduced illegal border crossings nationwide by 93%, demands fair trade for the U.S, and asks that Europe share more of its responsibility for NATO.

The U.S. now has leadership that is philosophically aligned with conservative nations, promoting and embracing the importance of a sovereign nation-state. The question to consider now is “How can the U.S. continue to support the sovereignty of our allies?”

The strength of President Trump’s pro-sovereignty position itself gives support. The cooperation of the Brussels and American elite has become less relevant. The funding of liberal nonprofits by the “transatlantic Deep State” is being dismantled by our administration and that of (for example) Hungary, Slovakia, and Georgia.

But more is needed to solidify future success.

First, President Trump’s policies, which drastically changed the direction of U.S. foreign aid, should become part of U.S. law. Funding with U.S. foreign aid should be defined more narrowly within the Foreign Assistance Act and others, and implemented with clear oversight, transparency, and accountability measures (like program monitoring and evaluation), with emphasis on humanitarian assistance and economic development.

Second, the sentiments expressed by Rubio and Vance, reflecting the traditionally shared U.S.-European principles of free speech and citizen-led governments, must become official U.S foreign policy and backed by strong implementation. For example, Rubio’s words to the German government, calling for a “reverse course” regarding the AfD, are a positive example that could be instituted more broadly and consistently.

And third, the U.S. must proactively endorse and support our allies, being emphatic to reinforce successes wherever they achieve a significant victory— in the ballot box, the courthouse, or on the world stage. The globalist Left is never afraid of celebrating and synchronizing activities, and neither should we be afraid.

Today, our strength lies in valuing our differences while actively embracing the common values that unite us. A notable example is the 250-year-long connection between Hungarians and Americans. The “Father of the U.S. Calvary”, Michael Kováts, was a Hungarian who trained the Continental Army in Hungarian hussar tactics. Kováts also courageously fought for and gave his own life in the service of American independence during the Revolutionary War. He is buried and memorialized in the U.S. at The Citadel military academy.

The Post-Cold War status quo is no more. A new era of sovereigntist nationalism grounded in liberty, prosperity, and peace has been forged by President Donald Trump, and his patriotic allies are rallying to his banner.

Dr. Shea Bradley-Farrell spoke about the sovereigntist turn of U.S. foreign policy under the Trump administration at the first international conference of Hungary’s Sovereignty Protection Office “Fight for National Sovereignty” in Budapest, June 24, 2025.

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

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Siameses en pánico)

Dramatic though they are, and welcome for many reasons, those displays of weariness and anger by Spaniards that are increasingly being shown in public are not the most significant thing about these frenetic moments in Spanish public life. They are the reflection of the rage accumulated by that ever more desolating daily experience that we live worse and worse. Joined to the certainty that we have a Government fundamentally dedicated to stealing, to concealing its crimes and to preserving power by fraud in order to guarantee itself impunity.

It is indeed very important that the residents of a neighbourhood in Sabadell should take the decision to restore a little order where there is now only chaos and systematic mistreatment of the decent, law-abiding citizen by the worst, by delinquents and abusers, whether native or invaders. As it is that hundreds of residents of Alcalá should now demonstrate as a matter of routine, even though they are beaten for it, to demand the closure of one of those focal points of terror, crime and filth with which the Government is seeding the whole of Spain.

What makes the moments we are living through not merely decisive politically but historically transcendent is that the guardians of the system have gone into panic. That same system which has sunk into the swamp of greed and corruption beneath banners of delirious ideology to the point of being hijacked at its summit by the underworld, by the criminal depths and by high organised crime. The collapse of the left-handed Siamese twin is so abrupt, so brutal and merciless, that the right-handed twin has seen that he must hold him up and keep him on his feet so that the whole body does not fall and drag them both into the abyss.

These days we have every element needed to understand the sheer completeness of the failure of this sui generis Spanish two-party system, whose satellites are not, as in other countries, parasitic ideological parties but outright enemies of the Spanish nation. Their pacts have led to this permanent logic of total corruption which is now bringing about the fall of their most vulgar representatives.

On one side, the socialists are trying, by now in an absolutely useless way, to put a new face on something which, gaunt and sick, represents nothing but fraud, swindle and crime. The coming volleys of accusations, many of them arriving from the other side of the Atlantic, will show the extent to which Spain has been hijacked by transnational organised crime and used over these decades, and used effectively, as a bridgehead towards the general penetration and multiplication of international illegal business in Europe and beyond.

On the other side there is the congress of the Partido Popular, which is already taking shape as the founding act of the new social democratic party that is to take on the role of keeping the general racket standing now that those who spoke for it are sinking into disrepute and into jail. The party that is now the “reformist centre” is preparing an operation of broad understanding, I am sorry, of grand coalition, State pacts or a fix-up among elites, gathering together the interests of all those who wish to avoid too many fire hoses being called for and “doing too much damage to one another”.

For the first time in Spain, the game of the big parties, which has been a tacit pact above and below the Constitution, is going to be posed openly in the face of the threat they perceive, for the first time in history since 1978, of a genuine alternative. Now they really have seen the wolf’s ears, they have gone into panic and they are going to seek “common solutions” to prevent Spain from producing that real change which would leave them marginalised in disrepute and naked in failure.

Spaniards already know very well, in spite of the parallel reality invented by the media of the system, that the collapse of their security, of their social well-being and of their quality of life has a great deal to do with those centres that symbolise the invasion, no longer merely tolerated but incentivised, by populations radically alien and hostile to our way of life.

They are the centres for unaccompanied foreign minors, or not, through which they channel an illegal immigration that is an immense business in which the governing mafia takes part. With this business it diverts vast quantities of public money into its own pockets, directly or through organisations ridiculously called NGOs (non-governmental) when every one of them lives off the public purse. All of them of a more or less radical leftist ideology, they live off national, regional or local governments and off the European Union, the great European corrupter in its use, for social engineering and ideological pressure, of funds supposedly dedicated to humanitarian ends.

Because the incentivised invasion is not only a lucrative business. It is also an effective political and demographic operation of destruction of the social fabric and of the national community in towns and neighbourhoods. The admirable Giovanni Sartori earned the hatred of his once-admiring socialists when he denounced the fact that the immense danger of Islam for our freedom and civilisation lay in the fact that, beyond a very low percentage, under 15%, Muslim immigrants began to occupy, control and dominate the public space.

Today, when in many European neighbourhoods they treble that percentage, they impose their will at whim and are gradually taking over local authority thanks to the complicity of the entire left. In the United Kingdom they already occupy and control the town halls and the budgets of almost all the large cities, beginning with London. In Spain nothing else awaits us, unless there is a change of course and the great operation of reconquest of our homeland, of the territory, of sentiment and of the spirit, begins.

But the breakdown of the system that leads us to sense a new political era in Spain, and generally throughout the West, is not due solely to the incentivised invasion of hostile populations or to the infinite greed of abusive castes that are the scum thrown up by many decades of systematic campaigns to discredit the virtues.

It is also due to that anti-national obsession, to the perverse ideology of degrowth and its totalitarian social engineering that leads to the Green Deal and to this systematic destruction, carried out with genuine viciousness, of Western ways of life. As also to the despicable cult of convenience of those who called themselves defenders of order, of principles and of conservative virtues. The false defenders have been worse enemies of freedom and truth than the socialism discredited in its Bolshevik version. That socialism, conveniently modified in its forms, in its more or less social democratic versions, has effectively dismantled the defences of civilisation.

Now the revolt has broken out against the absolute derangement and the unreason that have declared war on common sense, as can be seen across the whole left and among those who emulate it three days late. As can be seen in every plenary session of the European Parliament and in the whole still-hegemonic political message of the social democratic two-party system in the European Union of Mrs Ursula von der Leyen.

Nothing about the future is written nor predetermined in its ending, and it may still be that the Siamese twins save themselves together and go on imposing on Western civilisation that suicide in which Spain is out in front. The changes needed to prevent it are deep, difficult and many of them traumatic. But there are at last good signs that in Spain too the nation refuses to die. Neither exterminated beneath an invasion, nor murdered by criminal separatist enemies, nor by a slow and deceitful euthanasia induced by an ultra-centrist, multicoloured socialism.

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 Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Estamos mucho mejor)

We are better off today than before, even though we are sunk as never before. We are better off than before because ever more Spaniards know that we are sunk, whereas until five years ago, although we were already sinking further every day, there was still no awareness of it. Today, perhaps, even a majority of Spaniards are already conscious that we are governed by organised crime. And that the steps which have brought us to the abyss were never taken in good faith nor with the least respect for the general interest. They were taken out of convenience for Spanish and foreign criminal interests.

It is precisely the foreign links that are very important in explaining the drift of the socialist governments, first of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and afterwards, in brutal fashion, those of Pedro Sánchez, towards ideological, political and executive positions much closer to the Ibero-American political spheres of narco-communism.

There are many Spaniards who support or sympathise with Santiago Abascal and who cannot quite understand why a leader of the opposition in Spain, within a reality as putrid as this one under Sánchez, should have devoted so much interest and activity to cooperation with the anti-communist forces and the enemies of narco-socialism in Ibero-America. The fact is that the leader of VOX was the first political leader in Spain to understand the extent to which the transformation of the Spanish political struggle since the start of the century is due to Spain having become the initial battlefield in Europe where organised crime intends to move to take total control, as in Venezuela or Mexico.

Organised crime moreover counts, thanks to its leftist banners, on the support, whether foolish, deluded or malicious, of the globalist forces of the European Union. The photograph of Delcy Rodríguez with Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels, with the Venezuelan criminal barred from setting foot on European soil, is quite a symbol. The EU has been the greatest ally of all the candidates of the São Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group in Ibero-America. And the protector of their criminal regimes, the supreme example being that of the communist dictatorship of Cuba, subsidised by Brussels.

If the organised crime of the São Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group have used the bonds of Hispanidad to make Spain the bridgehead of this totalitarian project with their strange allies of supposedly impeccable democrats in Europe, then the immense treasure that is Hispanidad and its infinite ties must be used for the reconquest of freedom both in America and in Europe, where we are losing it in floods every day and not only in Spain.

With Hispanidad, freedom, anti-communism and hope as their banner and with a mandate from Abascal, the Disenso Foundation together with the Madrid Forum set out to create these synergies for an effective fight against the expansionism and the brutality of that organised crime with an ideology which has emerged in past decades from the fusion of the communist movement with the drug cartels.

The great success of VOX in Ibero-America with the Madrid Forum and with the Disenso Foundation, which has literally wiped off the map foundations that have been present in Ibero-America for decades and with immense budgets, is due to the firmness, clarity and readiness to fight that they have shown. Qualities that so distinguish them from those forces which, in their eternal search for harmony with socialism, ended up either swallowed, defeated or murdered by it.

The Madrid Forum is inspired by the same non-negotiable spirit as the Iberosphere Summit that the Patriots group in the European Parliament is organising in Madrid this coming week: there is nothing to discuss with socialism. Socialism is a plague, a disease of the soul as Javier Milei says, and it must be defeated.

That is why the fight against narco-communism is the same fight as the one against Pedro Sánchez and against Zapatero and against their friends Maduro, Petro and Díaz Canel, who are, when all is said and done, the ones who hold the keys to the oil and to the cocaine. As also to the great deal of laundering that can be done in the Caribbean or in China. And until now also in Iran which, let us not forget, is another of the partners that helped Zapatero so that he could begin the institutional dismantling of Spain, make his alliance with ETA and with the Catalan coup plotters. As it was also a help afterwards to Sánchez with that small Venezuelan-Iranian product that is Pablo Iglesias, with whom he formed the first government of this personal and criminal project which must take Sánchez to the dock when this long excursion ends, an excursion that began with the Peugeot and ends in a colossal tragedy, in a criminal apotheosis and infinite damage for Spaniards.

We are better off today than before because we are already witnessing the greatest crisis of that joint project of regime change of Spanish socialism and organised crime, which has been functioning and advancing ever since this alliance came to power after the explosion of the 11M bombs of 2004. It is a power that in reality this alliance never relinquished, even though its representatives and its government presided over by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero spectacularly lost the elections to a Partido Popular that obtained an absolute majority with 186 deputies.

The seven years of Rajoy’s government, first of emergency and afterwards of corruption and indolence, neither bent nor braked the coup project of socialism and its criminal allies at home and abroad. And not precisely because the Partido Popular lacked the possibility, the necessary time and the overwhelming absolute majority that were required for a radical change in the course and the discourse of politics in order to save Spanish democracy and stop its enemies. It had the resources but it did not know what for.

When the nightmare of Sánchez’s criminal band and its allies is over, let us hope in peaceful fashion and without the criminals being able to use other methods from a not-distant past, Spaniards must be very conscious that they cannot repeat the mistakes of the past. Those who wish to change Sánchez for a grand project of harmonisation with the socialists will once again commit the errors that have always led to tragedy. The fall of the delinquent government must bring with it a radical change in the forms of government. Everything else is to go on along the agonising route designed by the enemies of Spain so that it should disappear into the hands of organised crime in various taifas, under different flags.

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. Deterrence: Peace Through Strength Works)

The United States relies on deterrence to protect our country from all enemies foreign and domestic. The police and border patrol protect our cities and borders by deterring criminals and their associated organized criminal cartels.

The U.S. military, including all five services from the USAF to the Marines and Coast Guard, protects our nation’s interests and sovereignty and our allies overseas through displays of deterrent forces that give pause to our enemies.

However, there are pressures in the U.S. that are deliberately proposing the U.S. stop deterrence both internal to and external to the United States even atop the already serious loss of deterrence to date.

For example, HASC Chairman Mike Rogers explained at a recent hearing on the Mideast and Africa that:

“American deterrence in the Middle East and Africa eroded under the last administration. The disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan emboldened our adversaries. The Biden administration’s appeasement of Iran only made matters worse. After Hamas’ barbaric onslaught, Iran opened a second front—activating the Houthis to strike Israel and disrupt global trade. Since 2023, the Houthis have launched hundreds of attacks on U.S. warships and commercial vessels. Yet, instead of holding the Houthis accountable, the Biden administration pulled them off the terror list.”

Previous administrations said Ukraine was either of no security interest to the United States (2014) or feared (2022) Russian escalation to the nuclear level and therefore reduced weapons provided to Ukraine and failed to develop any strategy to win the war against Putin and Moscow.

These policies in the view of our adversaries were interpreted as a show of weakness and of a limited faith in conventional or nuclear deterrence in 2014 and 2022. America thus sent signals to Moscow that Russia largely remained in a sanctuary free from Ukraine attack. What possible incentive would Moscow then have to negotiate a settlement that restored Ukraine sovereignty?

The same foreign policy mistakes were duplicated with respect to Iran. Taking Iran proxy Hamas off the terror list, providing $100 billion in frozen oil and gas funds back to Iran, and undermining Israel deterrent capability against Iran, collectively again took the U.S. deterrent off the table dealing with Iran proxy terrorism and missile strikes for example, and the Iran objective of exporting its Islamic jihad revolution worldwide.

There is a domestic corollary as well. Leaving the U.S. border largely open to those seeking illegal entry and providing them residency rights by the multiple millions took our border deterrent off the table.

Over 2021-4 ten-twelve million illegal aliens crashed our borders but with approximately 8-10 million given permission to remain in the United States and many to receive Medicaid and food stamps, as well as work permits on top of a free plane ride to the city of their choice.

Multi thousands of these aliens are criminal elements escaping law enforcement in their origin country, while smuggling drugs and engaging in human trafficking to the tune of at least $42 billon each year.

The United States took border deterrence off the table, and as consequence 107,000 Americans dye of drug overdoses annually, escalating crime hits our cities, while the U.S. has lost some 400,000 young unaccompanied migrant children, many of whom are believed to being sexually trafficked.

The Trump administration restored border deterrence quickly as the laws on the books allowed enforcement and return of deterrence. Adding thousands of ICE and border patrol officials plus detention centers are all in the reconciliation budget and will allow the continued enforcement of border security.

Foreign policy deterrent choices have also been correctly identified by the new administration. But no laws on the books are alone adequate to win back deterrence. Both major new investments and strategies are needed.

On Ukraine the administration determined there was no strategy to win and thus a cease fire was superior to turning Ukraine into an extended Verdun.

On Iran the administration correctly laid out the options. A negotiated agreement is possible but only one which ends the fiction that Iran has a right to enrich uranium. Or the United States and Israel either together or separately will take whatever military action necessary to put Iran’s nuclear enrichment technology out of business.

But the most serious threat is to take deterrence off the table involves our extended nuclear deterrent. Writer Annie Sorensen’s book “Nuclear War: A Scenario” called all U.S. nuclear deterrent strategy immoral, unworkable and therefore “mad”! Following suit, global zero and other disarmament groups support doing away with U.S. nuclear deterrent including unilaterally taking down 400/700 of the strategic nuclear delivery vehicles allowed by the New Start treaty. One new book describes the U.S. nuclear deterrent as “temporary.”

U.S. nuclear deterrent strategy holds at risk key enemy leadership, security and military assets, and has done 100% successfully for some 7 decades. It has emphasized having a secure second strike nuclear strike capability. How strange then that abolitionists want to change U.S. policy to “no use” of nuclear weapons even in retaliation to first being attacked by nuclear weapons. This would literally take down the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Unilaterally.

Deterrence has worked because the country has always (but often late) made the necessary investments. Today the new defense budget adds funds for key nuclear assets including the Sentinel ICBM, the Columbia submarine, the B-21 Raider strategic bomber plus the D-5 missile and LRSO. And work is being done to build a sea launch cruise missile, new NC3 and the entire warhead building enterprise. The total modernization investment of $27 billion, out of a total federal nuclear effort of $62 billion, is a modest investment out of a Federal budget of $6.8 trillion or .39%.

Modernization thus comes to a relatively modest $350 billion over the next decade, far less than the projected CBO numbers of over $1 trillion. Proposed FY26 defense spending is $870 billion including DoD and NNSA, and thus with nuclear modernization spending (not sustainment of legacy systems) at a reasonable annual cost of 3.5%.

Nuclear Deterrence has worked extraordinarily well even in the midst of crises. After Berlin in 1961, President Kenndy credited the Polaris submarine small warhead developed by Lawrence Livermore Laboratory for giving the U.S. the technological edge to stand down the Soviet threat to attack the U.S. military forces in Berlin. In 1962 the Cuban missile crisis brought the world close to nuclear Armageddon, but as President Kennedy later said the deployment of the new Minuteman I missile at Malmstrom USAF base was “my ace in the hole” that resolved the crises peacefully.

The U.S. Minuteman deployment was just in time; the very same day the U.S. intelligence community determined the Soviets had employed nuclear armed offensive missiles in Cuba. The Minuteman deployment gave the U.S. the leverage to blockade Soviet trawlers bringing missiles to Cuba and remove the existing missiles as well.

In short, key U.S. nuclear technology development, part of ongoing Eisenhower and Kennedy administration modernization, saved the world from nuclear disaster.

Peace through strength works. It’s called deterrence. And modernization is deterrence, thus the urgent need to deploy as soon as possible the current modernization plan put forward to Congress for FY26 and beyond.

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

Immigration: ‘Ordinary Dutch people feel that their country is being occupied and they pay the price.’ (Photo by Niels Wenstedt/BSR Agency/Getty Images)

Continue reading

(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in RealClearDefense. The Right Path to Better Deterrence)

Is the West in increasing danger of being attacked with nuclear weapons, whether from a nuclear armed state or a terrorist organization? And if the nuclear threat has accelerated, is the current U.S. deterrent strategy adequate and cost-effective to prevent any such attack? And does an alternative strategy seeking abolition make sense?

Nuclear dangers have indeed increased. And nuclear weapons have become key elements of state strategy particularly with respect to Russia, China, North Korea and potentially Iran. Most importantly has been the adoption of an “escalate to win” options where nuclear weapons are introduced into a conventional conflict.

To counter these threats, U.S. deterrence strategy is in transition along multiple paths. Legacy deterrent forces represented by the U.S. nuclear Triad are being both significantly upgraded and replaced. The Administration and Congress understand the country is lacking in theater nuclear forces and is seeking to remedy that shortfall with the development of such technologies as nuclear capable sea and air-based medium range cruise missiles. The nation’s nuclear command, control, and communication (NC3) is also being upgraded to overcome cyber and other threats. And the nation’s nuclear legacy warheads are being replaced as service life extensions have run their course.

This effort has been moving forward since roughly the middle of the Bush ‘43’ and beginning of the Obama administrations, but lacked the urgency required to move forward quickly. The good news is that the current administration has repeatedly made the case that such modernization is of the highest national priority and will be accelerated.

Most importantly, the U.S. is not initiating any kind of arms race. Far from it. The U.S. program of record including upgrading the entirety of the U.S. nuclear TRIAD is consistent with the 2010 New START arms control agreement, even though it expires within the next year. The modernized force as currently planned is even smaller than the current legacy force—two fewer submarines (12 vs 14) and 48 fewer (192 vs 240) sea-launched ballistic missiles.

The U.S. has not modernized its nuclear deterrent for three decades and will not complete the task until somewhere between 2042-50. A little more than half of the current cost of U.S. nuclear deterrent investment is for sustaining and maintaining the current legacy systems. As modernization accelerates, that will change as the legacy systems are retired and the modernized systems come into the force. These legacy systems include 400 Minuteman III (1970), 14 Ohio class submarines (1982), twenty B2 and 40 B52 strategic bombers (1997 and 1962), along with 240 D-5 SLBM (1990) and LSRO or cruise missile (1982).

Unfortunately, the U.S. went on an extended procurement holiday and simply stopped upgrading its nuclear deterrent after the collapse of the USSR, except for a service life extension for the Minuteman missile and most of the Triad’s warheads. Thus, extending the life of the current nuclear deterrent will still be required for some decades, probably through 2042-50.

Can We Afford Survival?

Former Defense Secretary James Mattis answered this question in the affirmative. He got the numbers right. However, popular narratives claim the U.S. is spending $1.7-2.0 trillion over the next 30 years on nuclear modernization and are routinely cited by Congressional opponents of nuclear modernization and their global zero accomplices. Such estimates are bogus.

Modernization is actually a smaller part of the nuclear expenditures than the support needed for our legacy system. According to Senator John Hoeven, a senior member of the Defense Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the new Sentinel ICBMs, Columbia class submarines, B21 Raider bombers, LRSO or cruise missiles, and the upgraded D-5 SLBM missiles, will collectively cost $17.1 billion this fiscal year (FY2025), and shortly after 2030 peak and begin to decline as modernization moves forward.

The research, development, and acquisition costs of the new ICBMs, submarines and their missiles, the nuclear portion of the new bomber, as well as new warhead and NC3 work, are $350 billion over the next decade. That comes to 3.5% of a ten-year flat DoD budget, and some .4/10ths of one percent of the projected 10-year Federal budget or one out of every $257,000 spent by Uncle Sam. This modernization is not “nice to have.” Its “have to have.” The only other choice is to rust to obsolescence as Clark Murdock once quipped as the current legacy forces are aging out. The choice is thus between recapitalization of the force or going out of the nuclear deterrent business. Our legacy force is between 28-63 years old and will be 45-80 years old when fully replaced. If this qualifies as “arms racing,” every tortoise in the United States could qualify for the Olympic 100 yard dash!

Deterrence Strategy

A plethora of global zero enthusiasts—the Arms Control Association, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Ploughshares, Global Zero, the Carnegie Endowment—have embraced Annie Jacobsen’s thesis in her “Nuclear War: A Scenario” that current U.S. deterrent strategy is as Jacobsen writes, “Mad” and no longer viable.

Her thesis, long also held by those who support abolition, is that any initial use of nuclear weapons, however limited, will quickly escalate to an all-out nuclear war, which in turn will trigger “nuclear winter,” and billions of people around the globe will die. Part of her thesis is that the U.S. military has a built-in bias toward using nuclear weapons, and they will collectively “jam up” the President to unleash the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal no matter how limited an initial attack is on the United States.

For abolitionists, nuclear weapons are only good to “show deterrence” but cannot ever be used in retaliation should deterrence breakdown. That this essentially reduces our deterrent to a “bluff” seems to have been missed by the abolition folks, as well as the obvious consequence that if adopted a “no use” strategy means no U.S. adversary will now take our nuclear “deterrent” seriously. The corollary is that numbers also don’t matter because for the United States nuclear weapons won’t ever be used first or second, in a retaliatory manner.

However, as numerous U.S. military officers have testified to Congress, every war game concludes that “nothing holds” when our enemies introduce nuclear weapons into a conventional military conflict. “Nothing holds” means all the assumed advantages the U.S. holds on the conventional battlefield disappear. This is the rationale behind the adoption of “escalate to win” strategies by Russia and China. They believe the threat of introducing nuclear force into a conventional conflict will drive the United States out of the conflict and force the United States to stand down.

Conclusion

As the U.S. searches for the right strategy to secure deterrence in this troubling new nuclear age, there are five principles we should keep in mind.

First, without nuclear modernization we are out of the nuclear business—and facing unilateral disarmament.

Second, deterrence fails, and the U.S. loses if enemy nuclear weapons are introduced into a conventional conflict. The U.S. thus needs better deterrence at every level of conflict, especially involving theater nuclear forces.

Third, discarding a nuclear retaliatory option reduces nuclear deterrence to bluff.

Fourth, the United States is modernizing but only “racing” to get to where it already is—the 2010 New START allowed level of warheads.

And fifth, abolition doesn’t make sense. Particularly the daunting task of all nuclear powers abolishing their nuclear arsenals simultaneously. As the leader of North Korea is reportedly to have said when asked by a U.S. representative to join an effort to abolish nuclear weapons— “sure, you first.”

But unilaterally eliminating U.S. nuclear weapons as a deterrent force–as abolitionists are proposing– only invites more war, as such weakness is provocative.

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

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Derechos para los árboles, no para los humanos)

More than 40 European parliamentarians have crossed the Atlantic and travelled to Lima to hold the twice-yearly summit of the Euro-Lat Parliamentary Assembly, which brings together members of the European Parliament with members of the three Ibero-American transnational parliaments. It is one more of the very many mass-delegation trips the European Parliament undertakes at immense expense and habitually with scant results, when not null or, worse still, laughable.

It is always good for parliamentarians from different regions of the world to see one another. Although it would be advisable that they be real parliamentarians and not the hired thugs of dictatorships, as are the supposed deputies of the supposed parliaments of Cuba and Venezuela who were present there, to the shame of everyone. But well applauded by the European socialists. Of course, the European People’s Party, which now provides the president of the European side of the EuroLat Assembly with Gabriel Mato, is as complicit in the insufferable attendance of dictatorships’ hired thugs at the EuroLat summits as the socialist Javi López was in the last legislature. In the final document all the allusions to dictatorships in America disappeared.

In spite of all this, attendance is imperative. Even though many of the debates are grotesque precisely because of the control the left holds over these gatherings, the attendance of the national, patriotic and conservative forces, committed to the fight against narco-socialism and the organised crime of the São Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group which control the entire Ibero-American left and by now no small part of the European one, is very important. Today there is, thanks to Vox, a very firm and mobilised interest among those European forces in carrying the cultural and anti-socialist battle to these forums as well, which until little more than five years ago were courtesy meetings where the European side was entirely Spanish and in which the left imposed all its messages and the Populars considered themselves satisfied if they managed to strip out of the joint reports and documents a few passages made preposterous by communists and radicals.

That is why, withstanding all the revulsion generated by the spectacles of corrupt consensus enjoyed by the dwindling majority of Populars, Socialists, Greens and Communists in the European Parliament, attendance at these gatherings is little short of obligatory. If only in order to raise one’s voice at some moment against the follies forged there in messages from the Ibero-American left which the European social democratic consensus is accustomed to dilute a little and then take on as its own.

The follies are not minor ones. And many no longer come only from Andean or Central American communists but from European ecologists and socialists. It says everything that the greatest achievement of this gathering should have been to prevent the approval of an absolutely delirious and little short of diabolical report that seeks to grant rights of their own to trees, plants, rivers and, of course, animals.

That is the European left today, with which the Populars have pacts in the European Parliament in order to snatch every post from the groups to their right, especially from Patriots, in which Vox is integrated. Vox in fact had the right, under the D’Hondt system, to occupy a vice-presidency of the European Assembly of EuroLat, and it was snatched away by an agreement between Populars, Socialists and the far left.

That left is the one that wants to give rights to trees, though not to the Spanish olive trees they are uprooting by the hundreds of thousands, but denies them to Venezuelans, to Cubans, to Bolivians and Nicaraguans. They want rivers to have the right not to be dammed or channelled, but they support the repression of narco-socialism throughout Ibero-America which leaves ever more thousands of political prisoners without rights and dismantles institutions as a team coordinated with Pedro Sánchez in Spain.

This report was signed not by some lunatic chieftain and witch doctor from the ranks of Evo Morales but by a Spanish socialist MEP, César Luena, a socialist from La Rioja who amuses himself with his co-religionists by seeking forceful ways to destroy every possibility of living off the land, of maintaining a profitable and viable agriculture and of achieving growth, increased well-being and prosperity. Luena was not alone. All the socialists and the European left supported this lunatic report, which was defeated thanks to Ibero-American votes together with the European centre and right.

This same Luena is the rapporteur of the preposterous and criminal European Nature Restoration Regulation, which takes shape in a terrifying picture of social engineering and destruction of infrastructure with a radical and anti-human vision of ecology. With a farewell to ethnocentrism and to all respect for the interests of human beings and of peoples and nations, in one monstrosity and the other he seeks to do away with a nature at the service of man and to sacrifice the human being for the sake of a nature that comes to hold rights of its own. The socialists want to promote the legal recognition of animals, mountains, rivers and trees as subjects of law, placing them on an equal footing with human beings.

So the Lima summit ended with socialists who lost their bid to give rights to nature in order to strip human beings of every right to exploit crops, animals and plants and natural resources so as to live reasonably from them. But it is as well that everyone should know that they lost thanks to reasonable deputies from the Hispanic countries. And that they should remember that these socialists, who between corruption and ideological delirium are a mortal danger to any nation and society, continue to maintain a firm coalition, as Esteban González Pons likes to say, with the European People’s Party.

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. Defending America or Inviting an Attack?)

Many Americans want to avoid entangling the USA in unnecessary foreign wars. They also want the government to spend money smartly. But given the serious nuclear and missile threats facing the United States, meeting such objectives will take clear thinking and smart strategy.

One new idea from research analysts at the CATO and Quincy Institutes to both save money and avoid wars is to stop the Golden Dome missile defenses now being proposed by the Administration.

These critics have adopted the strange idea that the U.S. will use a missile defense shield not to defend the country but to hide behind such defenses while making dangerous preparations for a first strike against the Russians and Chinese.

Years ago, this was described by Ploughshares Joe Cirincione as a “first the shield and then the sword” strategy. Such critics opposed even the Congressionally initiated limited shield of 44 interceptors the Bush administration deployed in California and Alaska twenty years ago to defend against missile attacks from states such as North Korea and Iran.

So, these missile defense critics are now standing reality on its head. The good guys—the United States—are really the bad guys. And nations whom we thought were evil— such as North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China—are now understandable, even benign—they may be planning to attack us but only because the “evil” U.S. is planning on building defenses.

Just so you understand, let me go over this again. For the United States, the critics now contend that building a defense would apparently be riskier than not building any defense at all. The United States would be making the world more dangerous because Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, fearing the U.S. was planning to strike first, would plot to get in the first punch. So, to prevent such a pre-emptive strike, the United States has to make it easy for the bad guys to strike us first.

Now the critics’ logic is not clear, but apparently by eliminating any defense of our homeland from ballistic or cruise missiles in the first place, the bad guys would refrain from ever attacking us. Sort of a “peace through submission” strategy. Leave the U.S. at risk, totally vulnerable, as we can then rely on enemy totalitarian powers and their terrorist agents to solely decide whether to keep us safe. Strangely, on this the critics such as Joe Cirincione agree with China and North Korea—the Golden Dome says Pyongyang would be “highly dangerous” and “could be used for offensive purposes” while Beijing says Golden Dome will “start an arms race.”

The opponents also think the Golden Dome defenses won’t work because they assume the technology being sought will be based on the Israel Iron Dome missile defense technology. Even though Israel has successfully intercepted thousands of incoming missiles and rockets from Hamas and Hezbollah over many years, those destroyed targets have not been intercontinental ballistic missiles of hypersonic speed.

However, the Israeli accomplishments were still extraordinary. Its interceptors were able to shoot down rockets even updating their software in real time. Given the very limited number of terrorist rockets and missiles that have broken through Israel’s defenses, the coercive and blackmail nature of the terrorists weapons have been much diminished. Even though perfect protection isn’t possible, the central purpose of missile defenses was nonetheless achieved.

Critics, however, still insist that since the U.S. would probably be defending against much longer range missiles, Golden Dome cannot duplicate the Israeli success. And that high speed missiles coupled with decoys and counter measures can spoof a defense unlike shorter range rockets.

But to date tests show the missile defenses against long-range missiles succeed as high as seventy percent of the time, and against all missiles and rockets, even upwards of more than ninety percent in the real world. And unlike many critics, missile defense proponents such as Uzi Rubin, Hank Cooper and Trey Obering have actually directed the building of real-world workable missile defense systems including elements in space. Which are now deployed around the world. And with a technology now vastly more capable than when missile defenses such as SDI were first proposed.

Now is the United States shaking up international stability by building the Golden Dome? Actually, the United States has shown remarkable restraint in building only 44 missile interceptors to protect the continental United States. While also markedly reducing our deployed nuclear forces from near ten thousand strategic long range systems to 1550 under New START, while also in 1991 simultaneously and unilaterally eliminating over 90% of our theater nuclear systems.

Despite U.S. restraint, Russia and China have major dual use defenses deployed in far greater numbers than any U.S. systems. According to the Atlantic Council, “Russia’s and China’s extensive development of homeland missile defenses gives lie, to an extent, to [the] contention that U.S. missile defenses are uniquely destabilizing.” Further explains the Council, “Numerically extensive Russian and Chinese missile defenses… could alter the strategic-forces balance with the United States if not accounted for in U.S. strategic forces policy.”

In addition, critics don’t understand the likely missile threats the U.S. seeks to neutralize and why such a challenge can be met. An effective EMP threat, for example, could be from a single missile. A terror attack aimed at a major American city could be a few missiles surreptitiously launched from the sea, from a freighter with a pop-up missile. Russia could be threatening an escalate to win strategy, as Putin has done in Ukraine, where an attack might involve a limited number of missiles aimed at U.S. forces or allied bases overseas. In addition, Russian LRCM performance in Ukraine shows severe survivability issues with up to 70-90% being intercepted by missile defenses. And an attack could be inadvertent or accidental, and by definition limited, where a missile defense would be a great protective asset.

Now an attack on the United States involving an all-out massive use of missiles could also occur. And to be sure, defenses could not stop 100% of such an attack. Although defenses could defeat or blunt or seriously complicate any attempted disarming strike. However, Russian development of nuclear attack options such as escalate to win but short of an all-out disarming strike is seriously worrisome. As James Howe argues, Russia is deploying nuclear forces to conduct selected nuclear execution options on adversary nuclear forces, bases, admin/political centers and war production with the objective to limit damage, control escalation and achieve victory. Missile defenses such as Golden Dome makes such attacks less likely to succeed or heighten the uncertainty in the minds of the attackers, which is the essence of deterrence. Adding a theater nuclear capability such as a Navy based cruise missile also would strengthens deterrence.

Nonetheless, the ability to intercept one or a limited number of missiles could be the difference between the survival of a nation or its destruction. As former House Speaker Gingrich has explained, an EMP attack could send the United States economy back to the early 18th century. And defenses need not protect the airspace above Paraguay or Lichenstein or the Himalayas and can be deployed preferentially to target missiles launched from Russia, China, North Korea or Iran.

The 2003 Gilmore Commission concluded it was critical that the U.S. protect thirty two of its most important infrastructure nodes, the destruction of which would cause widespread harm amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars and even millions of lives. And whose destruction former IRGC head Soleimani explicitly referenced as an Iranian objective. Israel’s ability to defend its nation from Hamas and Hezbollah missiles and rockets reportedly prevented in 2015 what was estimated to be a possible two-thirds sudden drop in Israel’s GDP.

Our adversaries may in all likelihood seek to surreptitiously attack the United States. That is the basis of the decades long tactics of terrorists and their state sponsors. Nation state sponsors of terror and wars of national liberation hide their shadowy role precisely to avoid retaliation, and to render impotent U.S. deterrent capabilities. Defense helps solve that dilemma and buys the defending nation the time and space to eventually strike back. That strengthens not weakens deterrence.

Such future surreptitious attacks are not going to be a massive, all-out missile attack the U.S. can see coming. Any deliberate such enemy attack with multiple hundreds or more warheads [the Armageddon option] would only be coming from China or Russia. Both would understand that any such attack would probably immediately precipitate a massive U.S. retaliatory response that would essentially cripple and destroy the leadership and key military assets of the bad guys. Any such initial strike on their part would thus be suicidal. And adding a robust U.S. defense against just such an attack further complicates the objectives of these rogue attackers, making any such attack even more suicidal.

Opponents of missile defense are apparently blind to these geostrategic realities. Yes, the U.S. territory to be protected is indeed vastly larger than Israel. But Israel has protected its country from literally many thousands of missiles, rockets and drones, while the U.S. would most likely have to protect itself largely from multiple dozens of such missiles, a technology challenge we can win.

To be clear, few are arguing that a massive attack against the United States involving thousands of warheads can be effectively stopped by missile defense. That Armageddon type attack would definitely invite a major U.S. retaliatory strike, and one potentially involving a retaliatory strike of more than one thousand nuclear warheads of all kinds. The U.S. is markedly improving its nuclear deterrent to stop just such threats. Golden Dome is not a substitute but an adjunct to this deterrent capability.

Thus, proceeding with Golden Dome adds to deterrence and involves collectively putting together in a layered approach some dozens of existing and new missile defense systems, sensors, interceptors and other technologies, many acquired over the past four decades.

All can now be fully developed, tested and integrated, and put into the field, especially in space. Interceptors are now defending the United States and its allies here and abroad, involving air, land and sea missile and air defense components including Patriot, Aegis, THAAD, Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow, and GBI’s, as well as ground and sea-based sensors and radars. Golden Dome will integrate everything and add the key missing technologies such as space based and laser technologies.

In conflicts involving Ukraine, Korea, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, the Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS, spanning nearly four decades, the United States and its allies have used missile defense for protection or had it available to deter attacks. Thousands of lives and billions in treasure have literally and proactively been saved. Thus, the slander from one Quincy analyst that missile defense is a multi-hundred billion dollar scam is itself a scam.

Apart from how missile and air defenses have worked in the real world, does missile defense make arms control more difficult and create grave strategic instabilities, as critics assert? What does history tell us?

First, the United States signed the ABM treaty ban on defenses in 1972 at the insistence of the Soviets. The Soviets first pushed for the ban in late 1968 as they wanted to catch up with the American offensive forces as they trailed by multiple thousands of strategic warheads. The Nixon administration sold the SALT “arms control” and ABM agreements as a package. Since U.S. missile defenses would be unavailable to limit Soviet first strike capabilities, such offensive capabilities would have to be curtailed through “arms control” or SALT, which was added as an executive agreement to the ABM treaty.

Nonetheless the promises of SALT were false. There was no real arms control but a joint agreement to build up to an agreed upon but very high level. The Soviets deployed at least 3000 SS-18 ICBM first strike offensive warheads despite the ban on defenses, the opposite of what had been promised. In fact, the SALT process codified massive increases and not decreases in Soviet strategic warheads, amounting to a Soviet growth to over ten thousand strategic nuclear warheads from a base of roughly two thousand.

A 1983 net assessment by the U.S. DoD projected Soviet strategic forces by 1993 would reach 24,000 warheads under the SALT process. The Reagan/Bush START reductions became a reality only with the end of the Soviet empire and the leverage the USA created with its offensive modernization, investment in SDI and economic warfare against Moscow.

Ironically, many of the opponents of both SDI and now Golden Dome supported at the time a 1980 Moscow initiated nuclear freeze just as the USSR was completing its nuclear modernization. While simultaneously opposing much of the Reagan-era American nuclear modernization which was just beginning.

Subsequently, some decades later in 2002 the United States finally got rid of the ABM treaty. Shortly afterward, in 2002 and then in 2010, respectively, the United States proceeded to sign two treaties cutting nuclear warheads, under the Moscow and New Start treaties, which reduced strategic nuclear weapons in Russia and the United States from 6000 to 1550, or by 75%. Russia commented at the time that eliminating the ABM treaty was of no adverse consequence.

With the defensive ban in place in 1972, deployed offensive nuclear weapons went up 500%. With defenses possible, after 2002, deployed strategic offensive weapons were cut 75%.

It may be that the era of arms reductions is now over. But we now have the ability to counter a Chinese buildup with both nuclear expansion and a robust defense. And also counter an emerging Russian nuclear breakout, both of which reflect the hegemonic ambitions of Moscow and Beijing. With a combination of offense and defense capabilities, the U.S. does not necessarily have to match Russia and China warhead for warhead but still work to improve deterrence.

Long before the ABM treaty was junked, Russia built its own defenses as now reportedly has China. Blaming America for Russian and Chinese hegemonic ambitions is right out of the propaganda playbooks of the Kremlin’s SVR and Chinese Ministry of State Security. The United States needs to get on with building up its security and dismissing the foolish idea that we are the bad guys and the bad guys are good.

As former defense official and defense expert Pepi DiBiaso explains, “the Golden Dome signals a welcome interest in more comprehensive air and missile defenses for the homeland. It aims to move beyond the missile defense policy framework established decades ago in a far more benign strategic threat environment. That policy narrowly confined the homeland defense posture to a small number of ground-based interceptors and radars to defend against a handful of ballistic missiles from regional powers.

DiBiaso concludes: “Given the ascendance of Russia and China as significant great power competitors, the role of missile defense should be realigned to provide a measure of protection from any adversary who might seek to threaten or strike the United States.” Alternatively, eliminating defenses puts U.S. security at high risk and would give the totalitarian powers and enemies of the United States a big head start in securing hegemonic power over the free world.

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow 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. The Current Nuclear State of Affairs)

With the ceasefire between India and Pakistan, and for now the passing of the immediate danger of a nuclear conflict in South Asia, it would make sense to review the current world-wide nuclear state of affairs, especially as we honor those who sacrificed to protect our freedoms.

Much of the recent news has concentrated on the buildup of China’s nuclear forces and the Russian threats to use their nuclear forces against Ukraine and its allies. In addition, there have been reviews of North Korean missile tests and to what degree Iran has enriched uranium.

Although all serious developments, what is missing is an appreciation of what these four rogue states wish to do with their nuclear capability, whether numbering in advance centrifuges or dozens, hundreds, or thousands of nuclear warheads.

As has been often argued, numbers do matter in the nuclear balance. And thus, increasing numbers should be of growing concern to US security analysts.

But what is it that these states wish to do with these nuclear weapons? That’s where the rubber meets the road.

Three of the four are seeking to build “empires” of sorts while the fourth (North Korea) is a cooperative adjunct of the other three and undertakes whatever the three require.

President Putin has said he does not wish to re-create the Soviet Union. However, he apparently does want to re-create Russia as an empire, including and particularly incorporating Ukraine, the Baltics, Finland, and much of Eastern Europe. Russia is not only terrorizing Ukraine with drones and missiles but also engaging in sabotage and cyber war against nations in eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

China sees its rightful place in the international firmament as the world’s hegemon having a right under heaven to be the world’s premier power, even as Gordon Chang has cautioned, including dominion over outer space, the moon, and even Mars to achieve these goals. China has unleashed unrestricted warfare against the United States and its allies especially in the economic field and harms our social cohesion with what Xi calls a reverse opium war.

Iran is guided by its constitutional mandate to export its violent and terrorist Islamic doctrine through the use of multiple proxy, terror organizations, such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

After 56 years of such terror, Iran has caused the death of tens of thousands at a cost of multiple trillions of dollars. Contrary to popular belief, Iran’s terror campaigns are not going to be settled with the adoption of an unattainable but pretend two state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

Iran seeks to build an Iranian condominium of allies in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria as well as Gaza and the West Bank with which to attack Israel and US interests in the Middle East. That Israel and the United States have seriously eroded this Iranian objective is good news, but the bad news remains that Iran fiercely holds onto this objective.

As long as the United States maintains military forces in the Republic of Korea, North Korea will probably not invade. However, North Korea‘s role is to pin down American resources in and around the Republic of Korea and Japan, in order to force the United states to provide resources in the area while Chinese created conflict is initiated elsewhere in the western Pacific, particularly with respect to Taiwan. You can be sure that the CCP will cleverly use North Korea as a proxy force to make it all the more difficult for the United States to defend its other allies in the region.

In addition, it is well known North Korea and Iran cooperate on missile and nuclear technology developments. North Korea and Russia cooperate similarly, as well as having the former provide troops for Russia’s war against Ukraine. In addition, North Korea serves as China’s agent whenever the CCP decides to create military mischief somewhere against American interests. And China buys Iran and Russia energy, helps Iran arm the Houthis piracy, and underwrites most of the North Korean economy.

These enemy forces in Europe, the Middle East and Asia confront the United States with serious military threats that cannot be thwarted by any US quick pivot to Asia. All our allies must pivot as well to all three geographic areas as the United States cannot deter these threats alone. That is why the administration as far back as 2017 pushed hard to get NATO to the 2%GDP defense level and why now in 2025 that goal has rightly extended to 5%.

Europe has a GDP closing in on $20 trillion, with a population of 449 million, and a per capita income of $62,000. America’s Indo-Pacific allies number two billion people, with a GDP of $20 trillion and a per capita income reaching $34,000 in the Republic of Korea and Japan, $84,000 in Singapore and $10,000 in India.

All can contribute to freedom’s collective security which is precisely what the Administration is seeking, and putting America first is not putting the US alone. The US investment in defense is now approaching $1 trillion which is necessary to protect our security and deter bad “hombres.” When measured in what it would cost the United States to buy the military fielded by China and Russia, the US defense spending matches but does not exceed Moscow and Beijing. Given the United States has global obligations and security requirements, the resources applied to defense and security make sense but cannot be expected to meet all our collective and joint security needs. Real allies pull their own weight and do not depend solely on their friends for security.

Together America and her allies can pivot to the growing dangers. And if proceeding with the moral clarity of peace through strength, we can protect our security through deterrence and welcome indeed many future decades of peace and prosperity.

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