Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: End of American Empire Page 1 of 13

Joe Biden’s Three Genocides in Four Years: Ukraine Part 4

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On September 30, 2026

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I’m back again to bury the Biden legacy.

Once again, I have to remind readers why I’m bothering with this when the Corrupt Dotard Donald Trump is in full-on florid psychosis and threatening to annihilate Iran while breaking all records for Presidential corruption.

Since Trump sucks so bad (and yes, I’d say he’s even worse than Biden, and there IS a difference between the kinds of administrations we get with the different parties), why bother with ol’ Plagiarism Joe?

The reason is simple.

Until Americans, particularly Democrats, reckon with just how disastrous the last three Democratic presidential administrations have been (yes, America’s neocon foreign policy starts with Bill Clinton blowing up Yugoslavia and turning NATO into an offensive alliance and has continued to warmonger ever since, regardless of which party was in power), we’ll keep getting stuck with more of the same “not quite as bad as the Republicans” bullshit; we will only continue hurtling toward the undeniable end of the American Republic.

There is currently a well-funded counter-revolution occurring in the Democratic Party in which centrist Dems and the MSM are aligning to destroy anti-genocide, anti-war candidates like Graham Platner in Maine (got him) and replacing them with consultant-pliable candidates who are willing to disappear their progressive bona fides, take pro-genocide money, stop talking like a local, and do embarrassing crap on social media.

If Dem voters don’t belatedly realize that their party establishment leadership is as corrupt as the GOP and actively push to purge them, we will not be able to vote our way out.

Never forget the Iron Law of Oligarchy.

So let’s get back to the Delaware groper’s (and credibly accused rapist) abysmal record as US President.

In part 1 of this mini-series within a series (the prequel covered COVID, we’ll wrap with Gaza), I covered the post-Cold War years when Joe Biden ran point in the US Senate under the Clinton and Bush 2 administrations.

In part 2, I covered Joe’s misleadership role as Vice President up to the success of the Maidan Coup in 2014.

Part 3 finished out Biden’s term as VP, during which his portfolio included a nearly free hand in Ukraine because Obama was busy hanging out with Jay Z or some shit.

This is the penultimate post in the series and will cover Biden’s relentless efforts to provoke Putin’s “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine throughout 2021.

I’ll come back to Trump’s term because the Donald laid the groundwork for Biden to entrap Putin into a costly and very bloody war in Ukraine, but I’m going to go ahead and rant about what Biden did in 2020 and 2021 that has cost so many Ukrainian and Russian lives.

Tough Talking Senior Citizen Made No Secret of His Plans

I’d written off Biden’s chances of winning the presidency throughout the early 2020 campaign season right up until Barack Obama and the utterly compromised and corrupt South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn conspired to rig the primaries (with the help of all the “moderate” candidates who dropped out en masse to help and Elizabeth Warren who stayed in despite having no chance of winning to hurt Bernie Sanders), only to be enraged and horrified by the 2020 campaign and the dreadful choice between more Trump and obviously senile and incredibly bellicose Joe Biden.

Biden made talking mad shit about Russia a centerpiece of his 2020 Presidential campaign (such as it was) from his January 2020 Foreign Affairs piece:

We must impose real costs on Russia for its violations of international norms…To counter Russian aggression, we must keep the alliance’s military capabilities sharp.

To his Sept 2020 Town Hall in Scranton, Pennsylvania:

I believe Russia is an opponent. I really do. But I assure you, they will pay a price.

To his Oct 2020 60 Minutes interview:

…the biggest threat to America right now in terms of breaking up our– our security and our alliances is Russia.

President Joe Was All Brinksmanship All the Time

Joe Biden entered office dead set on fanning the flames of war in Ukraine. Like all neo-cons, Biden’s contempt for Russia knows no bounds, and there’s no evidence he’s ever lost sleep at the thought of the devastation his actions have wrought on Ukraine.

President Joe wasted no time in turning up the heat on Putin, from his February 4 speech to Victoria Nuland’s State Department:

…the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions… are over.  We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia.

To his March 2021 interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos:

You think he’s a killer? Uh-huh. I do. He will pay a price.

Putin’s reply was typically savage, for a playground:

…whatever you call me is what you are called yourself. I wish him good health.

Biden happily reiterated his support for George W. Bush’s aggressive policy of expanding NATO to include Ukraine at the June, 2021 NATO Brussels Summit.

And in July 2021, Biden revealed he completely underestimated Russia and had no concept of what an industrial autarky can do in wartime, saying, “(Putin’s) sitting on top of an economy that has nuclear weapons and oil wells and nothing else.”

Don’t forget this policy was considered so aggressive at the time that it caused Bush’s Ambassador to Russia (and Biden’s CIA chief) Bill Burns to fire off the infamous Nyet Means Nyet Memo, and inspired Angela Merkel to write in her 2024 memoir that it was a “battle cry” aimed at Putin.

But that meant nothing to our big talking Joe, who told the DC press corps on December 3, 2021 that “I won’t accept anybody’s red line.”

I spent the whole year of 2021 freaking out about the potential of war in Europe even though no one I knew in real life or online seemed to care.

Gaslit to the Point of Panic

I’d been terrified about NATO expansion since I realized we’d admitted Albania and the Baltic States into the alliance at some point late in the Bush administration.

I was alarmed but not surprised when war immediately broke out between Russia and Georgia, but I was relieved when the American electorate reacted with utter bafflement to John McCain’s claim that “Today, we’re all Georgians” and threatened war with Russia on the campaign trail.

Little did I know that the insane warmonger John “Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran” McCain would become a lodestone and role model to mainstream Democrats by the end of the 2010s.

It was reassuring when Obama laughed off Mitt Romney’s claim that Russia was “without question our #1 geopolitical foe” in 2012 by saying “the 80’s called and they want their foreign policy back.”

But after the Clinton campaign blamed Russia for losing the 2016 election to Trump and the liberal corporate media went into a frenzy over RussiaGate, there were no more reassuring laughs to be had.

Friends, family, work colleagues all turned into blood-thirsty warmongers who saw Putin as the villain of villains, solely responsible for the Trump presidency, and were not shy in calling me a “Trump enabler” and worse for being profoundly opposed to any kind of military conflict with nuclear-armed Russia and the deadly serious and quite competent Vladimir Putin.

Only the excellent Congressional Dish podcast by the brilliant and incredibly thorough Jennifer Briney provided some well-sourced reinforcement of my sanity with its December 2021 episode “Keeping Ukraine.”

So I spent all of 2021 in isolated terror at what I saw as Biden’s relentless efforts to provoke Putin and Russia, using Ukraine as his bludgeon.

As worried as I was, I could never have imagined the full-bore information war that would overwhelm the West in 2022.

We’ll get to that next time, but before I wrap, I need to go back to Trump, for completeness’ sake.

Trump Arms Ukraine

Despite Obama giving Biden, McCain, Nuland, and company a free hand to stir shit in Ukraine in his term, he refused to provide aid to the Ukrainian military, recognizing that Russia would always have “escalatory dominance” in the region.

Trump, perhaps stung by the Clinton campaign’s trumped-up (no pun intended, I lie) RussiaGate bullshit, handed his Ukraine policy over to neo-cons Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and had a much more aggressive policy posture than Obama had allowed.

Trump Arms Ukraine

Trump Gets Himself Impeached

The Democratic Congressional Majority had a principled opposition to charging Trump with violating the Emoluments Clause, despite the many open bribes he’d taken from foreign countries, but his clumsy 2019 efforts to get Zelensky to incriminate the crooked Biden family with naughty doings in time to impact the 2020 election brought the hammer down.

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Conditions for Revolutionary Change In The West: Fiscal

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On September 24, 2026

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The traditional revolutionary change requirements are:

  1. An inability to pay military, police and functionaries.
  2. A split in the elite.
  3. Popular revolt.

As a rule, all three are necessary.

In the Russian revolution, the military was noticeably absent, or in the case of the Navy, actually revolted. Near the end, with the old government in the Winter Palace and protestors outside, the cadets being used as guards refused to fight, the Cossacks which the government expected to come rescue them never showed up, and navy sailors helped organize the crowds outside and storm the Palace.

There’s a lot of confusion around this issue, and a fair bit of comes from the idea that money doesn’t matter, because you can always print more.

Sure.

How’d that work for the Weimar Republic?

The bottom line is that money is only good for buying what exists or what is close to existing.

What we’ve been seeing for about 60 years now is:

  1. price increases higher than wage increases.
  2. Deindustrialization.

This means the West is making less of what its own populations need, and the populations can afford less of what does exist. Internal capacity is collapsing. (Ignore CPI, it’s not just a lie, it’s a damned lie. Expenses have risen far faster than it suggests.)

The solution to this, such as it was, was to trade: buy what is needed from other countries. The West was almost the sole supplier of goods that other countries wanted: planes, cars, advanced electronics, weapons and so on. For a while the USSR was an alternative, but as time went by that alternative became less and less viable, until the collapse of the USSR, at which point the West was pretty much the only game in town.

But Western elites were drinking their own kool-aid. They wanted reduced wages and environmental protection costs, so they decided to move production overseas, especially to China. Now China can make almost everything that any country might want: they don’t have to buy from America, and as the technical ability to avoid the dollar payment system increases, that means they don’t need the West.

Recently, what we’ve seen is a reduction in Western coercive ability. Not a complete loss of it (yet), as Venezuela and Cuba and Greenland show, but a serious loss in power. In fact the pivot to coercing weak nearby states and vassals is due to the weakness: the US can’t win far from its territory, but it’s still scary to Latin America and Europe.

This isn’t just about the US though, France had its own sphere of African interests, with military bases throughout multiple ex-colonies. It essentially ran multiple countries. Almost all of them have now run the French out. The French nuclear system, for example, used heavily discounted uranium from African vassals.

Trump seized Venezuela’s oil and has locked down Greenland’s resources, but he’s lost the Middle East. (Yes the war continue. Yes the US has lost and the American Middle Eastern Raj is dying and will not be saved.) Africa would far rather do business with China.

So would Latin America, but American military might, “NGOs”, diplomats and intelligence services have so far mostly been able to keep Latin America in the American sphere. So far. As the ability to use naval forces to project forces declines (and it is and will) this will end, though the process may take a couple decades and a lot of pain.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that the US is becoming much more poor and will continue to do so. Its coercive abilities are low, it has lost Africa and is losing the Middle East. Even Asian countries which have disputes with China (Vietnam, for example) are integrating with China’s economy.

Can’t make it. Can’t force as many countries to sell to the US for cheap. Has much less to sell to the world that it wants at a reasonable price, since China sells all the same things for less.

At this point the system’s only remaining pillar is dollar privilege. Everything is bought and sold in dollars, the US can print dollars, and the US can thus keep buying what it needs.

Except when it can’t, as with rare earths, industrial magnets, and other resources and goods China has decided to stop selling to America, which it can’t make itself and for which there is no adequate alternative supply. These goods, by the way, are necessary for American weapons, and without them the US military will keep becoming weaker and unable to rebuild its arsenal. (On the other hand, Russia and Iran and North Korea all get as much of these goods from China as they need.)

And dollar privilege is ending. Oh it goes back and forth, the US is fighting tooth and nail to keep it going, but the trend is clear. Abuse of sanctions, in particular, has made it clear to everyone outside the West, and even to some inside the West, that being in the dollar system: settling trades in dollars, is a huge vulnerability.

I assume the picture is clear: America can’t make as much, can’t force other countries to sell for cheap, has less to trade that can’t be bought for less somewhere else, and soon won’t just be able to print dollars and buy it anyway.

This brings us back to the enforcer class. Police in America are paid VERY well.

With overtime it’s not unusual for police salaries to hit the mid hundred thousands.

Cops are, generally, pretty well paid.

The military is less so, with salaries in the mid 30K range being common for non-NCO enlisted members.

Cops are well paid because they enforce the laws.

“Duh,” you say, but the point I’m making is that they break strikes, intimidate protesters, enforce property laws and steal more money from people than burglars do–but not from elites. Laws are set up to favor elites and cops are how laws that are unfair are enforced.

They’re frontline against the possibility of change. During the American revolution, those unhappy with officials would gather in large groups and go “have a talk” with their representatives. That sort of thing is basically impossible now.

It should be obvious why it’s necessary for the enforcer class: military and cops, to break from the elites for a revolution to succeed. They don’t all have to, but either you need some on the side of the new order, or you need them to refuse to do their jobs: as was the case with the Cossacks in the Russian Revolution.

A lot of people think that the first requirement of revolution: being unable to pay cops, military and functionaries (someone does need to keep things running) is impossible now in the US.

They’re right.

Now

But as the US becomes poorer and as prices continue to rise faster than wages, even police wages, and especially as actual shortages occur (sorry, we just don’t have any) that will change. You could pay them 10 billion dollars, but if it won’t buy the food, medicine, housing, internet and so on that they need or want, it amounts to “not being able to pay”.

And that’s where the US is in danger of heading. Can’t make a lot of stuff. Can force fewer and fewer countries to sell or “give” resources to them, can’t earn an honest buck in trade because China’s good are cheaper, and soon can’t just print dollars.

(I also expect that a lot of US copyright laws may be overthrown in other countries in about a decade to two decades. No reason to pay that ransom if you aren’t buying from the US, and it’s better to have domestic industry or your own internet companies.)

Every great nation thinks “it can’t happen here” till it does. For the US the endgame grows closer.

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

Information Overlord: Houthis Roll, Hegseth Bumbles, AI Doomer Hype, Lots of Music Talk

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On September 11, 2026

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Nat Wilson Turner = Information Overlord = Flames Up = Phones Out = No Sense of Urgency

From me this week as Nat Wilson Turner

This week at Naked Capitalism I pulled a shift covering the Iran War and tried to connect the dots between Pete Hegseth’s Department of War and what’s going on with Meta and OpenAI.

I also continued my “Joe Biden’s Three Genocides in Four Years” series with the first installment of the Ukraine debacle.

More of what I wrote and recorded for The MMA Draw and The Let It Roll Podcast is at the bottom of this post but I wanted to feature the news links and think pieces.

What I’m Reading and Watching

The Iran War

  • The Iran War Has Just Had A Major Phase Change — Ian Welsh. On the interceptor math: the US runs out long before Iran does if Iran chooses to go all out, and hitting only three or four tankers a day was a choice rather than a ceiling.

“As I said day one of the war, the math is on Iran’s side: the US will run out of interceptors long before Iran if Iran chooses to go all out.”

Empire, and what it remembers

The AI trade

The AI Doomers really had their moment this week. I hope y’all know most of that crap is as overblown as the hype.

Money

What the heck is going on with the bond market, private equity, etc

 

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Ansar-Allah’s Blitz Likely To Reduce Saudi Oil Exports To Near Zero

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On September 11, 2026

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The picture above is from an Ansar-Allah (Houthi) strike on Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline. That and the Red Sea are how they were getting around the Iranian blockade.

About the Red Sea:

Yemen appears to have captured four islands plus the West coast of Yemen, most of which they didn’t previously control. This is… remarkable… because they have no navy, no airforce and one of the islands had an air base.

Meanwhile, they completely routed Saudi mercenary forces, capturing vast amounts of land in thirty six hours:

Saudi (and a few UAE proxies) were routed. They basically fled on contact. This is what happens when merecenaries go up against real troops, and the US isn’t there to help. Saudi Arabia has a huge air force, but it appears to have done basically nothing. (It’s an open secret that the Saudi military is a complete joke.)

MBS begged Trump for help and got none:

Saudi Crown Prince MBS called US President Trump twice on thursday, urging the US to carry out strikes but Trump reportedly declined as there are currently no plans for direct intervention. (Axios)

The US is over-stretched, and not just low on interceptors on missiles, glide bombs and so on.

The war in Yemen was a big project for Obama, and it included a hell of a lot of US support. Even with all that support they were only able to contain Ansar-Allah, not defeat it. (It’s worth knowing that while most of Yemen is not under Ansar-Allah control even now, the areas they control have 80% of the population.)

This is what it looks like when an Empire is in fatal decline.

I consider this good news, overall, but it’s going to absolutely suck for almost everyone. I have warned before, I’m warning again: stock up on staple foods, fuels and so on. Ansar-Allah now has complete control of the Strait, plus that pipeline is down for a while, and they can take it out again, or hit more refineries. Combined with the Iranian blockade, hardly any Saudi oil will be getting out, nor will the precursors for fertilizers.

Much of what was holding the oil market down (other than massive manipulation and releases from the reserves) was China reducing its purchases for months, but they’ve started up again, so demand is actually increasing.

We’ll see if Saudi Arabia has more sense than America: the correct action is to make whatever concessions are necessary. The Sauds cannot protect their infrastructure, their army is garbage, their mercenaries won’t fight and Ansar Allah has them by the throat. If they insist on fighting on they risk losing everything, because without oil revenue, Saudi Arabia is not viable, right down to not having enough food.

Much like the Iranians, Yemen has escalation dominance and is more willing and able to take pain (they lost millions to the last war) than the corrupt and effete Saudis. The Sauds have LOST and if they refuse to admit that, the House of Saud itself may fall. (No one will miss it, except people like Kushner, whom it has bribed.)

I consider yesterday one of the best days, geopolitically, of my life. The American Raj is taking body blow after body blow and is fatally overstretched. But it is going to SUCK for most of us, as prices rise and there are shortages, unless Trump has surgery to correct his chronic case of head in ass and agrees to Iran’s terms, while the Sauds do the same with Yemen.

It’s hard to predict Trump, but my guess is his Israeli masters won’t let him make peace, so get ready: the next year is going to be awful in much of the world.

 

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

Another Big Profit Opportunity For Elites Is On The Way (Bonds/Carry Trade)

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On August 19, 2026

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Japan has, since the mid 90s, had very low interest rates. The Japanese carry trade was to borrow in Japan and invest in America. You didn’t even need to take any real risk. Borrow Japanese, buy safe bonds in the US that paid more. Or you could use the money for riskier bets.

This has been going on for more than half my life and I’m not young. It was one of those money spigots that insiders and wealthy people have access too, but most of the rest of us simply watch: free money for some.

Now it’s coming to an end. The Japanese Yen is under immense pressure and so far interventions have not done squat. So the Japanese are raising interest rates.

But more than that they’re selling large chunks of their US treasuries in interventions, and Japan is the largest holder of US government debt outside of America. (China is second.)

This happens at the same time as the US bond market is breaking. Treasury literally can’t sell all of its bonds. Rates are high, about at 2007 levels, and they’re selling short term bonds and using that to buy their own long term bonds.

Add to this issues with oil and distillates, especially diesel, the fact that the US military is basically out of a lot of weapons and has lost a war.

Then there’s the real-estate market:

America and Americans are under a lot of stress. Because interest rates are high and Biden and Trump love to spend but not tax there are also soaring interest payments on the US debt.

Now the big advantage the US has over most countries is that its debt is denominated in its own currency. The federal government cannot go bankrupt unless elites lose their will to print money, which so far they haven’t. They’ve printed literal trillions since 2008, though it’s concealed by pretending that Federal Reserve operations which create money out of mid air to keep rich people rich aren’t money printing.

The result was massive inflation in the top end, and a drying up of businesses aiming at the middle class and poor. You see this most clearly in Las Vegas, which used to have cheap rooms and food but now doesn’t, because why cater to people who have no money?

(In China prices are low, even at luxury hotels, because there is a mass market like the one the US had in the 50s and 60s.)

After all this add in the AI bubble and fertilizer and diesel shortages hitting farmers.

The entire system is cracking apart.

The smartest money isn’t the money that has been plunging into the AI bubble, it’s the people who have kept their powder dry, because as everything goes to hell, there will be significant buying opportunities. Warren Buffet, for example, built up a huge amount of cash, though his successor has spent some.

In a serious economic crisis, and one is coming, you can buy up companies and assets (and all those homes, which you then rent at profit maximizing rates which leave millions homeless) for cents on the dollar.

As for you, dear reader, well, probably you won’t be able to take advantage of this, any more than you could in the bounce after 2007.

The Federal Reserve and other central banks will have to decide whether or not to do bail outs, and whether or not to bail out the rich or ordinary people. They’ll choose the rich. But there is a problem with the whole “America’s debt is in dollars so it doesn’t matter theory.”

America’s a net importer. It has less and less to sell to the world that the world needs. There has been a slow but consistent move away from the US dollar as a reserve currency, a movement away from settling trade in US dollars and China’s now forcing companies to choose between America and China. If you enforce US sanctions, they’ll fine you and if you don’t pay, you’ll lose access to their market.

Ultimately the US dollar’s value comes from US strength: economically and militarily. Like the British Pound (which was once worth five times or more than the US dollar) it can be expected to lose value because there is simply less need for it. Everything you really need you can get somewhere else, unless like Europe, you’ve sanctioned other suppliers so much you’re destroying your own economy.

Anyway, all of these things all happening at the same time is all sorts of bad news. I’d expect some sort of financial crisis within a year and it will be a doozy. Wherever it starts it will hit everything in the US and Europe and the Anglosphere and much of the rest of the world. Central banks will have to spent trillions in another bail out.

But this will be the last major US bailout, because after this there will be nothing. The US will not have the tech lead in almost anything, is not creating the world’s future techs other than AI (which China is winning, anyway) and will have lost much of its military intimidation factor.

Welcome to the end of the American Empire. You’ll see it in food shortages, high prices and an elite determined to become an elite similar to India’s or much of South America’s: ruling over essentially poor nations, but filthy rich amongst the rubble.

 

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

America Almost Out Of Long Range Strike Munitions

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On August 4, 2026

21 Comments

Why did Trump call off his big attacks? Why did the US stop attacking suddenly?

he U.S. Army has used up much of its stockpile of highly accurate long-range missiles during its five-month war with Iran, according to three people familiar with the data, raising concerns about the military’s ​readiness for future conflicts.
The missiles are principally the Army’s surface-to-surface weapons, known as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). The U.S. has used “virtually all” of these weapons, according to two of the sources.

There are also claims that the US is running out of long range air to ground munitions as well.

Combined these two things mean that if America wants to keep bombing Iran, they have to actually fly over Iran and put themselves in much more danger from Iranian anti-air, and by all accounts the Iranians still have plenty left.

This problem comes from the same place virtually all US problems come from: rather than optimizing for results (production) everyone optimizes for profits. Selling fewer missiles for much more money is a better business deal, yes?

And that the US cannot significantly increase the production is due to de-industrializing: sending most of America’s key industries to China, because hey, it doesn’t matter where things are made.

China is now the US in WWII. They could, in a war, easily retool to produce literally millions of drones. They can produce a hundred warships per warship the US produces. Etc.

These are systematic issues. De-financialization is politically impossible. Without de-financialization re-industrializing is not possible, as it would require companies to make far lower profits. Chinese companies are MUCH bigger than American ones, and make less profit (not revenue, but profit) and have far lower valuations.

In 2025 BYD sold 2.26 million cars. Tesla sold 1.64 million. And China has many auto companies.

The mindset for scaling and the mindset for profit-maxing are very different. American elites are all looking for moats: they all want to be able to charge more for a product than it is worth because no one is competing with them on price. (This is why Chinese EVs aren’t allowed in America: they compete on price and the American car industry would cease to exist on contact.)

America lost the Iran war over fifty years as it changed from an industrial power to a financial power. Power comes from what a country can actually do. What it can buy from other countries is a minor consideration unless it has the ability to force them to sell, and that ability comes from what the country can do. Against Venezuela and Cuba, the US is still strong enough. Against a middle power which prepared for war and knows how to use geography, not so much.

In general terms, everything that is happening was predicted decades ago by objective people looking at the trends. Power comes from capability, America was systematically getting rid of that capability to optimize for the number of rich people it could generate.

Military decline, industrial decline, technological decline: all of this comes from making profits the end-goal, rather than the mean by which worthwhile goals were achieved.

“We need to make a profit do X” is very different from “we do X to make a profit.”

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

“Nothing Ever Happens”

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On July 27, 2026

16 Comments

Oh?

Almost everything is on track.

  • Covid?
  • The financial crisis?
  • This war? China officially leading the US in tech and industry?
  • Global warming coming on faster than expected?
  • Massive wildfires every summer?
  • Trump being President?
  • The Ukraine war?
  • That little genocide in Palestine?
  • The US being unable to build enough weapons?
  • The complete breakdown of international law and (more seriously) the WTO trade order?
  • A revolution in war making technology which has allowed middle powers to fight great powers?
  • Multiple payment systems challenging dollar privilege.
  • Serious collapses in animal and insect populations, so much so that bug splat doesn’t exist in much of the world any more and that I rarely see songbirds.
  • Constant, inexorable rises in food prices, even before the war.

Notice that food per capita line. Remember all the screaming about fertility rates and look at the births line (though I think the collapse is more severe than modeled.) Industrial output is still increasing, as the chart suggests, but China’s about to go over a demographic ledge and I expect it will peak within ten years of the chart’s prediction. Resources are very definitely being depleted, though less fast than predicted. Still, it’s happening. Just read in detail about oil production.

Collapse happens slowly, then all at once. The post-USSR order has collapsed. It’s gone. The trade order has collapsed. Military supremacy is gone. Every summer we get wildfires and smoke in major cities, which did not happen before about 2019. This is a textbook example of climate change re-ordering the environment. What will grow up afterwards will be a different mix of plants and animals.

Things are happening. Big things. If you want the official “big collapse” well, it’s not here yet for the first world, but the death by a thousand self-inflicted wounds continues. As much as I admire what China has done, and as impressed as I am by solar and so on, they are still an industrial society based on planned obsolescence and over-production and are about to hit a demographic cliff (good in the long run, but it will cause issues.) The only escape from much of the resource trap would be large scale off world mining. Musk isn’t going to manage it. The Chinese are taking a shot, we’ll see. That wouldn’t, by itself, fix ecological collapse, however and won’t supply all necessary resources. It’s also unlikely to come on line in time, if at all.

You’re living thru an epochal period, similar to the WWI thru WWII period: everything is changing, but this time including serious environmental issues. There’s also all the social issues related to AI, phones, the collapse of reading and reasoning ability in some societies, mass surveillance and the rise of authoritarianism, even as civil liberties are contracting in almost every country in the world.

The post-war and post-cold war orders are dying or dead. The negative consequences of the industrial revolution are hitting home after we got the goodies for a couple centuries.

Things are happening. More things will happen over the next couple decades. If you can’t see that, you’re blind.

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

 

Text of the Iran/US MOU

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On June 18, 2026

19 Comments

From Dropsite:

Paragraph 1: (end military ops including in Lebanon: this is the one that may blow it up.)

The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war by signing this M.O.U. declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain [from] the threat or use of force against each other and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon and other provisions of this paragraph.

Paragraph 2:

The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran undertake to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs.

Paragraph 3: (This ain’t final, more to negotiate.)

The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran commit to negotiating and achieving the final deal in maximum 60 days extendable with mutual consent.

Paragraph 4: (Immediate end of US blockade, Iran has 30 days. US to remove forces.)

Immediately upon the signing of this M.O.U., the United States of America will begin the removal of its naval blockade and any disturbances or impediments against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and will fully end the naval blockade within 30 days. During this period, the traffic of vessels will be in proportion to the numbers of prewar traffic being restored by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States of America further undertakes to remove its forces from the proximity of the Islamic Republic of Iran within 30 days after the final deal.

Paragraph 5: (no charge for passage thru the strait. At least for 60 days, I suspect Iran/Oman will try and have charges after that.)

Upon the signing of this M.O.U., the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles and demining by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will be instated within 30 days. The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz, in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.

Paragraph 6: (US pays 300 billion in restitution. This is why Iran agreed to no fees for passage, at least for now.)

The United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least U.S.D. 300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The mechanism for the implementation of this plan will be finalized as part of a final deal within 60 days. All required licenses, waivers and permissions needed for the relevant financial transactions will be granted by the United States of America.

Paragraph 7: (End of sanctions.)

The United States of America undertakes to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the United Nations Security Council resolutions, I.A.E.A. Board of Governors resolutions, and all unilateral U.S. sanctions, primary and secondary, in an agreed-upon schedule as part of the final deal. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America acknowledge the critical importance of the sanctions termination issue above mentioned, and express their intentions to immediately address these issues in the negotiations in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.

Paragraph 8: (No nukes for Iran. Downblending in Iran under IAEA supervision.)

The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons. The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran have agreed to resolve the disposition of stockpiled, enriched material pursuant to a mechanism that will be mutually agreed upon in accordance with the schedule mentioned in Paragraph 7, with the minimum methodology to be down-blending on site under the supervision of the I.A.E.A. The two parties also agreed to discuss the issue of enrichment and other mutually agreed matters related to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear needs, based on the statutory framework being agreed upon in the final deal. The final deal will confirm the provisions of this paragraph. The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran acknowledge the critical importance of the nuclear issues above mentioned, and express their intention to immediately address these issues in the negotiation in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.

Paragraph 9: (No new sanctions, no new nuclear program.)

Pending the final deal, the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran agree to maintain the status quo. The Islamic Republic of Iran will maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program, and the United States of America will not impose any new sanctions, and will not deploy additional forces in the region.

Paragraph 10: (Again, end of sanctions: this time for oil products.)

The United States of America undertakes that immediately upon the signing of this M.O.U., and until the termination of sanctions, U.S. Department of Treasury will issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products and derivatives, and all associated services, including banking transactions, insurances, transportation, etc.

Paragraph 11: (Release of all frozen funds.)

The United States of America undertakes to make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran upon the implementation of this M.O.U. The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will mutually agree on the procedures related to the release of these funds during the negotiations. Such funds, whether retained in the original account or transferred, shall be made fully usable for payment to any ultimate beneficiary designated by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States of America undertakes to issue all necessary licenses and authorizations accordingly.

Paragraph 12:

The United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran agree that an executive mechanism will be established to monitor the successful implementation of this M.O.U. and the future compliance of the final deal.

Paragraph 13: (Negotiation not over yet.)

After signing this M.O.U. and subject to the beginning of the implementation of Paragraphs 1, 4, 5, 10 and 11 of this M.O.U., and the continuing implementation of these measures, the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will start negotiations regarding the final deal exclusively on the other paragraphs.

Paragraph 14:

The final deal will be endorsed by a binding U.N.S.C. resolution.

Commentary:

This is a decisive victory for Iran and a loss for Israel and America, though I’d argue that the US ending sanctions and military efforts in the Middle East is good for America. Still, there’s no question that this is the sort of deal that gets signed when one side (Iran) won and the other side (Israel and the US) lost.

I mean — 300 billion in reparations. The US end their blockade first. The US says it’ll get move forces out of the region. The US ends pretty much all sanctions and gives Iran back their money.

Massive win for Iran. Iran is now a great power in the region, and no one can deny it.

The obvious problem here is Israel. If Iran is serious about an end to violence in Lebanon, then this will wind up as a dead letter unless the US tightens Israel’s leash (which it can do, Israel is entirely dependent on US aid). Alternative the US could simply shrug, and make the deal only between them and Iran, and say “if Israel wants to keep fighting, it’s on its own.)

The question here is the power of the domestic lobby, and whether or not Israel has enough blackmail on Trump. (Signing this deal at all makes it look like the answer to , which I thought was “absolutely” may well be “nope, not enough.” We’ll see.)

The US is no longer a superpower. The world no longer has any superpowers. It’s still a great power with worldwide reach, but the days where it was the world’s “super cop” are over. It can still push around weak nations, but not strong regional powers. Took a little less than 30 years from the fall of the USSR for American elites to screw up a completely dominant position.

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