It’s more than a little ironic, from where I sit, that I’ve been so distracted by family matters during one of the most spectacular implosions of power in all of human history. I suppose a strange beast like America could never go down any other way.
Where Clinton, Obama, and Biden promised a slow decline, Bush 2 and now Trump have embraced death in fire. Great Amon Amarth track (can’t wait to run across the Ukrainian drone strike compilation set to this one!), but pretty much the embodied definition of the old Chinese curse about living in interesting times. Welcome to Ragnarok, folks! Wrote a whole saga about it a few years back for a reason. Bringing Ragnarok was always designed as a manual for understanding war.
To all things there must come an end, or else there would be no room for new growth. This is perhaps the most ancient and important ethical lesson of all, the true foundation of anything that deserves to be called the “good life” - that long preoccupation of certain European thinkers. Everything gets its season, then hands over the reins to a new generation - one way or another. As Johan Hegg screams it so well: all you know will wither away and sink into the sea; a new world will be born one day, where everyone is free!
From the level of the individual all the way up to the entire universe, change is the only true constant. Several generations of Americans have been trained to imagine otherwise, that there can be ever be a utopia in a cosmos ruled by entropy, won either through rigid adherence to traditional values or embrace of social progress.
In ecosystems science, this understanding is encapsulated in the concept of the Adaptive Cycle that I so often refer to. It describes how behaviors of agents operating within a given system will tend to change as it proceeds.
Just because a particular configuration of matter or interactions has existed in a given pattern for a long time does not mean this will remain the case for all time. There exist at any one time multiple arrangements that could persist if given the opportunity.
But a transition between equilibrium points is often messy, and usually fatal to some organisms caught out at a bad time. Sometimes, even a subtle shift can trigger a cascade effect, one piece of a broader whole at a time pushed beyond its operating limits. The emergent effect that results is typically impossible to control, with underlying tensions self-reinforcing. Chaos reigns until a settling point is reached.
Throughout history, certain agents have believed that blowing up an established order would benefit their interests only to discover that they had actually destroyed themselves. That’s one way empires commonly fall - Putin’s decimation of his own real military potential inherited from the USSR will forever be a case study in how imperial delusions plunge an empire into an unwinnable conflict.
Trump’s tariff assault on the world is a similar moment, an utterly suicidal move that I never dared dream he’d actually be foolish enough to get talked into. Apparently, that idiot who took a shot at him but didn’t remember to aim for center of mass triggered something very dangerous in Trump. He’s simultaneously a man who feels like the luckiest person on Earth - but who also now understands how easily even he can be permanently switched off.
This combination makes for the sort of behavior Trump began exhibiting soon after - picking a Constitution-hating twit for VP when there were infinitely better options, filling his cabinet with fellow TV personalities and con artists. Where Trump’s campaign through most of 2024 hit exactly the notes it had to if certain very rich and influential people were to be persuaded to tolerate him winning a second term, now he’s catering to a totally different set of would-be oligarchs.
Making sure that whoever might succeed you if a bullet comes to say hello to a vital organ is a bit of a loser has been a political survival strategy for thousands of years. Another is creating chaos for its own sake.
This is the real purpose of Trump’s near-universal tariffs. Moscow not being targeted because negotiations are already underway over Ukraine is a signal of their other goal: to make every country individually come begging to Trump for relief. This makes him look powerful - classic clientelist behavior.
Neither Trump nor America will wind up enjoying the consequences, which are guaranteed to far exceed any gains, even if some tariffs are paused or even rolled back. Because for all the silly rhetoric about America “taking its medicine” or whatever, the other side of this particular natural experiment is almost certainly a lose-lose proposition for Trump and his followers. It won’t be the richer Blue states that suffer most, because they have more natural capacity to adjust. And a better-educated workforce, which counts.
What, you think factories filled with workers on an assembly line are ever coming back? Not unless the good people of Ohio and Indiana would like to work in sweatshops. The alternative is robots. And because they don’t get paid, the towns that boomed when factories full of people were sited nearby aren’t required.
The USA’s economic performance over the past decade has been subsidized by the perception of the USA being impervious to certain forms of structural change. Investment flows into the US more than offset the country’s trade deficit while keeping polluting industries away from American neighborhoods. The USA is a net exporter of services to other countries, including military equipment and very often protection - for which many allies wind up paying more than their share, all things considered.
All of a sudden, all across the world the USA is being looked at with new eyes. It is now visibly at the peak of a massive bubble, with Europe and China as well as half the Global South looking almost as safe to park capital in the long run. Talk of an economic nuclear winter among Trump allies is not overblown. Team Trump hasn’t a clue what they’ve unleashed on themselves. This isn’t medical treatment, it’s radioactive contamination. Yes, some level of radiation can be helpful, despite the side effects, but you don’t simply drop a patient next to a nuclear reactor.
Two driving forces determine behavior once collapse has begun: convergence of real interests and the emergence of novel opportunities. When stuff gets shaken loose, so to speak, the most adaptable tend to prevail. All of a sudden, as old assumptions are burned away, entirely different futures become possible.
Sadly, they’re almost always forged in fire and blood. Postmodernism, an ideological pattern that tends to emerge in the era immediately preceding the fall, is not well suited to cope with such times. Symbols long relied on to signify a particular something suddenly absorb new meaning in response to unfolding events. Old categories disintegrate, and aesthetic preferences cease to matter. Ask a soldier under fire on the front line how they feel about self-actualization.
In these sorts of moments, everyone winds up being dragged in to the mess at some level. Powerful interests are reallocating their bets as I type this, with the ongoing global market turmoil a clear sign. Military actions will follow in time.
The systemic pressures generated by moments of change will tend to lead less-adaptable structures towards extinction. And that makes the failure to more closely and comprehensively understand the course and likely future of the Ukraine War a tragedy.
Everything will be Ukraine, in the sense that Ukrainians are among the first through the fire. The rest of us could only hope to do as well as the average Ukrainian has since 2022, or even 2014. To avoid the necessity of testing our own mettle, getting Ukrainians all the support they can absorb remains the urgent global priority it was three-plus years ago.
That’s a long intro for what will actually be a bit of an abbreviated post, but it’s been that kind of week! Only two sections this time around, straightforward briefs on the fronts and geopolitical developments. Apologies for the delay this week - frankly, I’ve been thinking of shifting my standard publication day to Tuesday for a while. Think it’s best to plan on that from here on out.
As I continue to think of ways to improve Rogue Systems Recon, I’ve begun to recognize that I need more than one day to prepare a full report. I’m often able to bank away a big chunk the prior week, especially on the geopolitics side, because it moves more slowly than the battlefield.
But I would like to get better about including more diagrams and links to useful information, and often find myself rushing to get done before I make dinner. Originally I limited time spent on the blog to a single day, but as the audience has grown (thanks, everyone!) I find myself wanting to polish a bit more - and get the word count down a smidge. But again, this week, sorry for any increase in typos or other errors. It’s been slightly hectic!
Overview of the Fronts: Week 14
Big Trends
It has been another week of the orcs launching around 200 attacks every day from Sumy to Kherson, and another week of only a fraction of these actually taking any ground. Having a background in advanced statistics, I seriously appreciate the outlets that track the data about enemy losses and actions reported by Ukraine. Technically speaking, a daily-level dataset with even a few variables chained to a consistent geography is a gold mine for research.
Even without applying cool algorithms, the heartbeat of the ruscist war machine is visible in these charts; ebbs and flows correlating with major shifts in the enemy’s approach over the years. Note how tank losses are slowly creeping down, on average, while personnel numbers head the other way? Moscow is trading blood for steel.
It’s almost funny to reflect on how little foreign media narratives about the Ukraine War correspond to the intensity of the actual fighting on the fronts. What the data shows is the orc war machine consuming the better part of key resources by late 2024, even sooner than anticipated. Casualties are spiking in conjunction with a steady decline in the average number of true armored vehicles destroyed, the enemy forced to replace them with civilian vehicles that die in even greater numbers.
Now there are confirmed reports of Chinese citizens captured fighting for the orcs in Ukraine. Even in terms of raw manpower Moscow’s war effort is struggling to keep up with the burn rate on the fronts. And again, all this effort has achieved practically nothing of note for months except Ukrainian forces leaving most of what was left of Free Kursk.
Northern Theater
Little material change has been noted across the northern Theater this week. The orcs are still trying to break deeper into Sumy and get behind Ukrainian troops in the last redoubt of Free Kursk, but necessary reserves have already been forced to deploy to contain the small Ukrainian punch into Belgorod.
Here ruscist propaganda claiming bitter Ukrainian defeats has not been borne out by reality. A video emerged, purportedly from inside Belgorod, showing a column of Ukrainians driving by shouting the national slogans slava Ukraini and heroiam slava - “glory to Ukraine” and “glory to the heroes”.
On this front Ukraine’s goal looks to be simply making it as costly as possible to push into Sumy. The Belgorod incursion is probably too close to the fighting in Kursk to have any hope of pushing into the rear of the enemy formation threatening Kharkiv.
In the slice of Kharkiv occupied by ruscist forces the fighting is still characterized by probes with small units, with not much heavy armor committed by either side. Though now and again Ukraine reports a potential expansion of this front, Moscow shows no sign of having sufficient reserves to accomplish anything serious.
Eastern Theater
The Kupiansk front is still bitterly contested, orc troops fighting to expand their bridgehead over the Oskil with virtually no effective vehicle support, though they apparently do keep trying to erect bridges. Moscow's war over the past year has increasingly become a potent demonstration of my oft-repeated point that if you lack any ingredient in the combined arms warfare game, efficiency takes a very serious hit. Tanks and artillery are far from obsolete: it is the steady degradation of Muscovite capabilities in these two areas that makes the effort to employ Soviet-style methods fail beyond the tactical level.
When the orcs throw a punch, in other words, it peters out more quickly. A year ago Ukrainian soldiers in frontline positions had to worry about fending off wave after wave of armored vehicles, dozens in a day at times. Now this happens less and less. As a result, Ukrainian troops are likely getting rested more frequently. The further improves their efficiency.
The Soviet way of war depends on applying enough firepower to a target area that the enemy ability to resist is broken. Western military thinking, so infected by the postmodern intellectual delusion that systems theorist John Boyd has been mistakenly labeled a a card-carrying member, is far too obsessed with getting into the enemy's head to comprehend that this begins with firepower. If you can't physically sever your enemy's communications and logistics, it doesn't matter how rapidly you cycle through your OODA loops relative to the other side.
One thing the Soviets got right in their doctrine was the importance of firepower. The enemy’s will to resist is broken, not bluffed into submission. So while the orcs can obviously still gain some ground in places, they lose so many soldiers in mass attacks mainly intended to try and keep Ukrainians occupied everywhere that tactical gains never come together to form an operational level crisis for Kyiv. The offensives never scale up properly. Ukrainian troops batter assaults both large and small with firepower, and Muscovite attempts to switch off between infantry waves and mass armored assaults is not disrupting Ukraine's defense in a systematic way.
And so despite slowly expanding bridgeheads over the Oskil and Zherebets, Putin's orcs aren't even close to triggering a serious crisis on the Ukrainian side. Some expansion of the Oskil bridgehead has been observed, and it is pretty clear that the enemy hopes to make it too large to easily destroy. However, Ukrainian forces east of the Oskil in front of Kupiansk hold positions that threaten to power a counterattack into the orc rear southeast of Dvorichna.
Another complication for the enemy is the aggressive posture of Third Assault Brigade, now the heart of Third Assault Corps, which threatens another Ukrainian counteroffensive that could turn the tide in Kupiansk in a hurry. Though 3A hasn't advanced substantially over the past week, insufficient orc reserves in their sector could expose Svatove to attack. Cutting the road from Svatove to Kupiansk would leave the orc bridgehead over the Oskil even more vulnerable, as the flank of the Ukrainian counterattack would be better protected.
However, Moscow has lately been demonstrating a pretty clear desire to push to Lyman over the Zherebets, as this would go a long way towards collapsing the northern flank of the long arc of front around Siversk. Only at the northern edge of the Siversk arc, on the approaches to Lyman, are there signs of Ukrainian weakness that the orcs might be able to exploit. The bridgehead over the Zherebets has expanded rather quickly, so far as these things go. It appears that they may have found a weaker brigade or gap between Ukrainian troops to target.
Since 21st Mechanized Brigade, mostly trained and equipped by Sweden and long assigned to guard the approaches to Terny, left for Kursk, Ukrainian troops have been forced back across the Zherebets. I wouldn't be surprised to see the 21st show up here again, because reports suggest the Ukrainian grouping on this front is badly outnumbered. I’d love to see the 21st help strike towards Volnovakha this summer, but familiarity with terrain is a definite multiplier of combat power.
With drones and electronic warfare, line-of-sight matters. On the steppe, a small rise or water tower can make a huge difference when it comes to making sure signals get where they are wanted - and interfering with the enemy’s. Knowing the lie of the land is a major asset in this regard.
Side note: something the Ukraine War may not do a good job of demonstrating is the limits of drones in mountain and forest areas. Huh, anyone want to fund a research project in Western Oregon?
The assault towards Lyman could wind up shifting to try and encircle 3A as it holds Borova. But Moscow’s prospects closer to Siversk look far stronger, such as they are. For over two years a fairly small group of Ukrainian forces has held off incessant orc attempts to reach Siversk from three directions. Without much fanfare, they've held a dense forest plantation, quarry complex, and swath of steppe that Moscow has to seize to reach free urban Donbas.
Truth be told, this sector should have collapsed long ago - that Moscow keeps throwing away insufficient numbers of troops in mostly failed attempts to make that happen says a lot about Moscow's management of the conflict overall. The logic the orcs appear to be following is that Ukraine must be tied down everywhere - trouble is, Moscow is the side stuck with too few troops on most fronts right now. Ukrainians are largely sitting back and wiping attacks off the face of the battlefield. That Ukraine pre-empts most orc offensives by launching spoiling strikes of their own indicates that Ukraine holds the initiative overall.
Siversk is one of those areas where the unexpected collapse of a Ukrainian brigade could rapidly alter the situation, but there is no sign of this being imminent. However, sooner or later the enemy almost has to make a serious effort, or else the flanks of any assault towards Sloviansk and Kramatorsk will remain dangerously exposed. And it’s wise to never underestimate what the Ukrainians can accomplish in these situations.
Kostyantynivka looks set to heat up in the near future as expected, and this makes Ukraine's adoption of a classic elastic defense posture, rather than a less consistently aggressive area defense, very sensible on this front. Reportedly the enemy is finally consolidating control over central Toretsk after losing much of it to Ukrainian counterattacks and preparing attempts to bypass Chasiv Yar from the south. But visible movement has been limited.
Moscow is also finally working to clear a Ukrainian salient west of Toretsk that has to fall for Kostyantynivka to be taken. Progress is slow, despite relatively limited Ukrainian forces in the area. They appear to be making good use of fortifications built up since last year, when this offensive would have made a lot more sense.
But trying and failing to take Pokrovsk and pushing through Vuhledar, Kurakhove, and Velyka Novosilka came at a cost. Ukraine traded some territory for decimating orc forces on this front. Chasiv Yar and Toretsk didn't fall as many, including myself, expected. A frontal assault on Ukrainian positions in Donbas was always a bad strategy - even if the line moves a few kilometers here or there, this doesn't solve the fundamental problem of Ukraine being able to keep its troops supplied nearly everywhere. Surrounding Donbas was the only viable option, and every orc attempt has failed.
With ruscist military casualties on track to surpass a million by midsummer, Putin's war on Ukraine is set to go down in history as one of the most colossal blunders of all time. How ironic that the only countries Putin has managed to destroy in this war are his own and the USA - with that he had a lot of help from America's political class.
Speaking of Pokrovsk, here too the situation is little changed from last week, though that isn't for want of orc attacks. A new wave has begun, but so far isn't accomplishing a whole lot. Ukraine's counterattacks over the past month are themselves now under pressure, though reportedly they're also continuing operations intended to reduce the salient over the Solona that Ukraine is slowly destroying.
If Moscow amps up attacks enough, the Pokrovsk perimeter will likely compress a bit. But surrounding the town is now beyond Muscovite means, so it is extremely unlikely to fall, even if attacks are intensifying again after a relative break in march.
The Donbas-South front also has seen only limited orc progress, though with heavy fighting reported across the area. Ukrainian brigades on this front are fighting very hard to keep the enemy away from Komar, Bahatyr, Novopavlivka, and Oleksivka. They have a nice forest bastion to hide reinforcements and support elements in behind this front, and the enemy is struggling to sustain logistics. If reinforced, the line should hold. The fighting in Rozlyv, Andriivka,and Kostyantynopil is apparently about preventing the enemy from establishing a forward base for the next wave of attacks.
In Rozlyv, the situation has been interesting for a couple weeks. The orcs first launched a frontal assault over open fields that broke into the village. After taking a few houses, more orcs were pushed in to expand their control. Ukraine has not launched a large counterattack despite the danger this orc push poses to the defense on the area. I suspect that this indicates a choice to conduct a fighting retreat to Bahatyr from Kostyantynopil in the near future.
Of course on the north bank of the Vovcha the situation is a bit different - many orc attacks have been repelled and Ukrainian counters have restored the line on the outskirts of Andriivka, at least in part. Overall, the enemy advance in this area seems to be steadily weakening. It is very much my hope that 5th and 36th Combined Armed Armies will not be ready to get smacked in the western flank by a pack of Ukrainian brigades in a couple months.
Southern Theater
If the fighting taking place between Orikhiv and Kamianka right now is the big Zaporizhzhia offensive that some Ukrainian sources have been warning about off and on for about six months, then once more Putin's horde is failing to get even the basics right. So far several weeks of increased fighting have led to the orcs advancing a couple kilometers into the gray zone. This just isn't a wise place for the enemy to commit forces right now, even if the goal is to distract Ukraine's leadership. At this stage in the war, that just isn't likely thanks to how decentralized Ukrainian management of line troops remains.
The pattern is similar down in Kherson: the enemy is always active at some level, contesting islands in the delta that just don't matter in an operational sense. Nothing the orc are doing in Kherson threatens a crossing in force, nor could the enemy sustain a bridgehead for long. So they terrorize civilians with drone attacks and try to pin down as many Ukrainian troops as possible. The level of threat is so low that Ukraine has only a small force covering the Kherson front, mostly coastal guard brigades run by the Marine Corps.
Crimea, meanwhile, is being positively harried by naval drone carriers launching strikes against air defense systems. The more enemy air defenses are degraded, the easier it will be for drones to get at stuff that Moscow cares about.
Air, Sea, & Strike
Talk of a ceasefire on the ground in Ukraine has proven to be as premature as declaring that Ukraine can't win the war. At sea, the ceasefire is almost meaningless, Moscow using its few remaining warships to launch cruise missiles at Ukraine from its side of the Black Sea while Ukraine's drones hit Crimea.
While Moscow has shifted its attacks on energy infrastructure to avoid big name stuff, local facilities that Moscow can claim to have hit because they house military targets are under attack. One night of no drones flying from orc territory turned out to be a fluke.
Just the other day an Iskander ballistic missile was launched at a neighborhood in Kryvyi Rih, Zelensky's hometown. Nine children were murdered - the most in any single known attack yet - by a precision strike that could only have been launched with the explicit intention of killing civilians.
The Muscovites deliberately targeted a spot right next to a playground in broad daylight, lying that a restaurant also in the blast was the real target and hosted NATO officers - a lie quickly disproved by security camera footage. This is part of a noted towards outright terror raids on Ukrainian cities lacking even the fig leaf of trying to hit actual military targets. Of course, if Ukraine had enough Patriot missiles, the recent increase in orc success rates wouldn’t be observed. The orcs will be the orcs, but Ukraine’s partners are still hoarding. Especially the USA.
Fortunately for Ukraine, too many important targets in Ukraine are now too well protected or have sufficient backups that the impact of any successful strike is limited, though that does nothing for civilians - the message the orcs wanted to send in Kryvyi Rih. Moscow is no longer able to overwhelm Ukraine's defenses as it once did. This weakness is manifesting as drones and missiles focusing strikes on civilians and first responders. Will no one ever learn that bids to break morale in this fashion never work?
By contrast, the Ukrainian strike campaign is maturing fast, heading in exactly the direction it needs to. As Ukraine shifts its targeting logic from energy infrastructure to comply with American wishes, it has shots to spare at other facilities of equal or greater importance to Moscow's war machine. So the only fiber optic plant in the Muscovite empire got whacked. Airfield ammo dumps are nice to hit too. The list of strikes keeps expanding, and there’s no longer much Moscow can hope to do about it. Not unless it can build a whole lot more air defense missiles, fast.
Moscow’s situation is not at all enhanced by the ongoing strengthening of Ukraine’s air arm. More F-16s are arriving every couple months, while the orcs have lost the ability to accurately plaster Ukrainian positions with glide bombs. Meanwhile, Ukrainian jets keep sending bombs over the border into russia.
Leadership & Personnel
Ukraine’s military reboot appears to be bearing fruit as expected, if the improved efficiency in wiping out orc troops without having to give up ground is any metric. More brigades are accepting direct enlistments, and anyone under 25 who volunteers can get a pretty square deal similar to what American veterans are offered - housing assistance, cash bonus, education benefits - provided that they survive. But better training has been mandated, both introductory and brigade-level.
Troubles remain, and will persist - reform takes time. Probably half the problem is getting the right information distilled into actionable policy and doctrine. In the end, survival in the field often depends on small stuff that gets forgotten in the heat of the moment unless certain habits have been drilled in to a soldier. It’s largely the job of people who write doctrine and develop training materials to figure out how to translate all the complex matters that could kill a grunt into instructions that hold up under fire. Probably weird that I kind of envy whoever gets to do that work.
I want to highlight an absolutely incredible piece on Kursk during the early days of the campaign, written by someone I presume is a Ukrainian either actively serving or in close proximity to those who are, illustrates many of the issues Ukrainians face in trying to coordinate their work. It’s a long read, but well worth it if you have any interest whatsoever in the breach of the enemy border in Kursk last year and why the campaign didn’t press farther into ruscist territory.
I don’t want to summarize too much, because it feels wrong to reduce something so informative and well done. But all in all I found my own arguments about Kursk made at the time and after to be strongly validated - even more than I anticipated. Granted, I can’t verify the identity of the author of veracity of his claims, but everything tracks closely with the open-source evidence. Having read a lot of operational level reports and analysis over the years, it has the full ring of truth. And I’m not just saying that because a few times I felt as if I had at times been somehow looking over the shoulder of whoever was commanding the operation.
Ukrainian leaders are not magical or infallible, and mistakes are made in every operation. Yet it is evident that - at least in the top brigades - the standard of training at all levels is high enough that Ukrainian troops are able to dominate the battlefield where and when they choose. The trouble is not enough of the right equipment, training, and leaders.
Eight months on from the start of the Kursk Campaign, it’s fairly apparent that overall Ukraine’s Ground Forces have already further upped their game. Everywhere the defense is stiffening and counterattacks are becoming sharper. Figuring out how to concentrate enough drone firepower in an area to allow traditional mechanized thrusts will be key to launching a major sustained counteroffensive this summer.
I’ll write more about that when I have the time. But when Ukraine does crash the orc front somewhere this year and the headlines start screaming about a shock counteroffensive leaving Putin’s forces in disarray, don’t be surprised.
World System Brief
North America
American policy at the federal level - and in more than a few states these days, is driven by an extremely simple loop. A large population of Americans is very angry that the world isn’t as they felt they were promised by society and the government and are willing to give money to pundits and politicians who assure them that the situation is absolutely somebody else’s fault. That implies an easy fix, in American society: punish the miscreants.
The natural result isn’t great on any front, but especially afflicts American foreign policy. With loyalty to the Big Man who is allowed to decide who is a miscreant being the only real criteria for holding positions of power, is it any wonder that - as History Does You so perfectly laid out in a recent (and excellent) piece about the “operator” mentality that infests D.C. circles - incompetent narcissistic clowns acting like Hollywood stereotypes run the show?
So long as their paying audience likes the performance, matters of life and death can be reduced to a reality TV game show contest. And eventually, every show needs a looming conflict that perpetually threatens to spiral out of control. Trump is doing all he can to generate several.
It’s very fitting that the death of the America everyone alive today has ever known comes down to a bunch of silly delusions stoked for profit. I include the utterly ridiculous antics of America’s Vichy Democrats, who remain determined to either give long speeches in what amounts to the earliest presidential campaign launch in history or hold protests that do more to reveal the appalling weakness of the “resistance” than anything else. This sort of empty catharsis does more harm than good at this stage wasting energy better applied to building alternative institutions.
With Trump blowing up the foundations of American economic stability in a doomed bid to somehow make capital move inland from the coasts, there now exists a very strong chance that the combined economic, social, and political dislocation of the past few years merge into a kind of systemic superstorm. Old tactics will no longer serve, and folks - much like Ukrainians in 2022 - will soon have to learn how to adapt if they want to thrive.
I have long discounted the possibility of an actual second civil war in the USA, thanks to the simple fact that most Americans who would fight in one have zero clue just how quickly they would die. The dangerous illusion of American military invincibility that has been baked into American minds by the media for over a generation could, however, convince just enough idiots that violence is a good idea to trigger a cascade effect.
The madness now spreading across the USA could easily lead to a large number of people deciding their interpretation of the Constitution must be the only correct one and back that up with an attempt to use force. My default forecast for the USA heading into 2029 is now a narrow victory by the Democrats powered by a sense of economic, political, and social chaos that is either overturned by extra-legal means or resisted by an active secession movement.
By sitting back and waiting for this to play out, Democrats are part of the problem. As a group, they are essentially maneuvering to claim the moral high ground in a conflict soon defined by old-fashioned brute force. The end of that strategic avenue is becoming a rubber-stamp resistance that empowers their opponents by playing a carefully defined role in the game.
The United States federal government needs to be broken up before that can happen. D.C. is now little more than a prize that coalitions of states are bound to fight over to preserve their own economic independence. Make no mistake: tariffs are taxation without representation, part of a deliberate effort to limit the liberties of some Americans to benefit a well-connected few. This isn’t about billionaires or populists, but raw internal colonization. The exact same thing that tore apart the USSR.
A bipartisan movement must manage to unite 3/4 of the states in agreeing to a simple separation of federal powers into autonomous zones. By getting ahead of the now-inevitable collapse of the USA, whether that comes in five years or fifteen, the impacts can be reduced and the system nudged to evolve into something far more sustainable.
What will immediately happen under this scenario is that in each region the partisan coalitions will re-balance, restoring competitiveness in a way that even partisans can appreciate. Instead of having politics revolve around culture. thanks to the media’s endless profit-seeking efforts to pretend that America is a single undivided society with common values, they’ll focus on real policy differences. It’s the federal nightmare that turns American’s against their own neighbors despite most actually agreeing on most matters.
Why? Because people move to places where they feel welcome. Today, America’s partisan political system is designed to keep shrinking populations in certain areas feel as if the federal government is going to come in and fix everything with one wave of a magic wand wielded by a cult hero. In the American West, communities are familiar with how this goes - you end up dependent on the whims of politicians.
Autonomy for everybody is the only just, sensible solution that stays true to the original vision of the Founders. Sadly, it is more likely than not to come after a vicious fight, because the sane majority is paralyzed and badly informed about how power works.
Europe
The single biggest reason why Ukraine is the key to a better future is that Ukrainians have already faced the worst and defied the odds. Having been through a crucible unlike any other, the adaptations that the Ukrainians come up with are almost guaranteed to be the best possible.
Another reason why Ukraine matters so much is that Europe’s security now depends utterly on Ukraine. The time it takes for the ruscist nightmare to launch an open attack on Europe - covert strikes have already begun, taking the form of sabotaged packages, electromagnetic warfare, and cutting of undersea cables - is closely bound to how much damage Ukraine does and how far it pushes the enemy back.
Though it’s out of fashion to talk about Ukraine’s 1991 borders, it is restoring these that opens the door to the ruscist attack being put off indefinitely. The cost-benefit payoff on that, in policy analysis, is pretty awesome. By contrast, an imposed peace would give Putin an incentive to strike as soon as physically possible to get ahead of European rearmament.
Current levels of support, even if escalated but only at a linear rate, will give Europe the 4-5 years it needs to be ready to probably wind up in a stalemate with a ruscist empire overtly backed by an ascendant China. Because no one should hold out much hope of the Americans winning a fight under the present leadership.
And why does Europe matter? Because it represents the only possible democratic counter to whatever the USA’s toddler leaders pull. The Pacific democracies are important, but scattered and facing their own unique geographic challenges. Most of the Global South is perpetually dancing on the precipice of dictatorship thanks to the lasting impacts of European colonization.
Strangely enough, Trump might have actually opened the door to the exact geopolitical development that stands a chance of stabilizing the world system rather than plunge it into total, irrevocable collapse. If China and Europe come together with the Global South, D.C. and Moscow would be mutually isolated. And since certain leaders in at least one seem to want to ally up with the other, China and Europe have a lot in common.
It isn’t inconceivable that China could become more pro-Ukraine down the line, unlikely as that might seem today. But if it seems like Moscow is doing a deal with the Americans that screws over Tehran, the door is open to Iran and China both seeking rapprochement with Europe. Ah, but Otto von Bismarck would shake his head and laugh at the presumptions of American policy minds…
Middle East
The American buildup in the region continues, Vinson group on the way to join Truman’s in the campaign against the Houthis. Iran is an obvious next target, though the ingress of assets, including B-2 bombers in Diego Garcia, isn't yet sufficient to do more than damage Iranian capabilities. Team Trump no doubt hopes that a mere show of force will convince Iran to accept dictated terms, but the chances of that are very, very low.
And Trump’s recent behavior suggests war with Iran to be inevitable. A large number of Americans have long held a serious grudge against Iran dating back to the hostage crisis that began during the 1979 revolution. The situation, coming just a few years after the humiliating fall of Saigon, hit America’s elite-cultivated self-narrative about the country hard.
Ever since, there’s been a big market for Iran hate in parts of America. Iran’s hostility to Israel creates an attractive synergy. Once the legend began that it was only Iranian support in the form of enhanced improvised explosive devices was responsible for most American casualties suffered in the occupation of Iraq, a new generation got pulled into the club - several in the Trump administration who claim to be isolationists seem to have no problem with being Iran hawks. Because Israel, of course, is so very precious.
Never mind that the Israeli military was once again caught in a bald-faced lie over an atrocity committed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza. This time, some ground team got the bright idea to set up an ambush spot along a road and shoot anyone in sight, including a column of ambulances with their lights blazing - nope, no Hamas. What’s just perfect about the video that emerged from inside the slaughtered convoy, from the perspective of someone who once trained to do this sort of thing, is that the rhythm of the gunfire suggests soldiers with personal rifles systematically lighting the convoy up.
That means they were at relatively close range. They knew what they were doing, and didn’t care. Pure orc behavior, familiar to far too many people in Ukraine.
Normally I give the benefit of the doubt to personnel at the scene. But I also know full well that there’s a mentality that can take hold among combat soldiers which will justify some seriously horrific behavior. I also know that this has happened often enough in Israel’s wars to suggest a culture of disregard for human life that isn’t Israeli. And someday, that question will become how Israeli is enough?
I’m just saying: my wife grew up around a lot of Jewish families in the greater Los Angeles area. If you like a Mediterranean climate and lack of constant threats to your life from angry neighbors, I’m pretty sure that the Jewish community in southern California would set up it’s own New Israel and prosper if antisemitism in North America ever became bad enough to warrant it. And the USA did a good enough job on its colonization of the area to ensure there aren’t many indigenous folks left to object if the Mojave were made to bloom.
This idea makes as much sense as the USA taking over Gaza. Or Greenland.
Pacific
In a very real sense, the emerging Moscow-D.C. axis represents an Atlantic civil war tied to Europe’s conflicts. Another irony of Team Trum is that their fake isolationism is just a cover for actively trying to meddle in European internal affairs.
The tariffs and trade wars sure to follow are all about clawing back capital not only from abroad, but Pacific America. Make no mistake: those fading rust belt communities filled with decrepit factories envy the prosperity of Pacific America as much as the established institutional power of the Northeast. Trump is deliberately taking revenge on California, Oregon, Washington, Hawai’i, and even Alaska for the fact we naturally benefit from global trade flows more than Kentucky or Oklahoma.
Pacific America has for the last two centuries been a colony (mainly) of the USA, a country that in purely technical terms really has no legal right to occupy this part of the world anyway. The formation states actively destroyed a pre-existing vibrant community where indigenous and European peoples had co-existed for at least a century or so before that.
Now, I’m not arguing that the states have no legitimacy, or even that the federal government in D.C. lacks it - at least in theory. There’s no going back to the past, though inspiration can and should be drawn from patterns that worked. But D.C. has no intrinsic right to rule here if it abandons the spirit of the Constitution. And if states ever defy their own, the same applies on more local levels.
In a situation where the integrity of the Constitution is manifestly under threat, it is the right and responsibility of states that can envision a future together to begin taking certain necessary steps. A shadow federal government must be formed, able to lay out an alternative vision of governance that people can rally around and use that to obtain material support sufficient to build the necessary infrastructure.
Something that Pacific Americans in particular must understand is that the situation in the Pacific is now extremely dangerous. We not only have to content with domestic collapse, but also the end of the Postwar Order. Trump has sent multiple signals suggesting that the USA might not defend Taiwan. He has also, through his tariff assault, achieved something once seen as nigh impossible: Japan and China exploring joint options.
By throwing away the last vestiges of its reputation for being a remotely reliable partner, the USA has damaged an alliance that has served America incredibly well ever since my grandfather stopped having to fly missions as a belly turret gunner against Japanese forces in Southeast Asia. Japan and South Korea, both alarmed by Trump’s North Korea policy during his first term, likewise set aside deep historical animosity to forge a closer working relationship.
If he manages to drive South Korea and Japan into Beijing’s arms, even a little, the odds of a unified response to Chinese actions around Taiwan go way down. Even Australia is forced to question its reliance on the USA these days. If D.C. is out of the picture, the Pacific democracies have two options: seek an accord with Beijing and hope that doesn’t lead to Taiwan’s fall, or ally up with Europe and commit to the defense of core principles like no changing established borders by force.
Be really nice if certain governors in Pacific America would stop dreaming of heading to D.C. and look west instead. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
Concluding Comments
Well, with my time being short this week I’ll leave the post here - shorter than usual, but actually probably just right for most readers. Apologies again for it coming out late and being a bit rough. As it turns out, it’s time consuming to move family across state lines - even within Pacific America - while also mitigating the consequences of the lack of proper medical care in rural places in this country.
Every dollar, minute, and breath wasted on D.C. at this point is a loss to entropy, sure as tariffs are taxes. And if American presidents can blow up the global economy this easily, we’ve got a serious problem with the Constitution when it comes to Executive Powers. I really hope it isn’t the kind that takes a civil war to work out. As much of an anglophile as I tend to be, I really don’t want to re-enact most of British history - particularly not the whole Roundheads and Cavaliers thing.
Though the Gunpowder Plot is sounding attractive right about now. Oh no, did I just get myself put on a watchlist?