Published: 2025-04-03
WaPo catches up
A recent "Exclusive" Washington Post article reaffirmed statements made a month previously by young US Secretary of Defense Hegseth at the Trump-proofed, UK led "Ukraine Defense Coordination Group" at NATO HQ. A leak provided the exclusivity, though it merely reaffirmed analysis by Brian Berletic published a month before the NATO HQ meeting. That analysis was reissued in this newsletter. Hegseth's policy direction for the Pentagon was straight from Heritage Foundation's Project 2025.
WaPo's contribution to the ancient knowledge was to inform that Project 2025's co-author Alexander Velez-Green is:
now in an interim role as the Pentagon’s top policy official
[WaPo]
The "leak" instructs the Pentagon to leave Europe to the Europeans. Outside of "defending the U.S. homeland" the Pentagon is to focus solely on one "pacing threat", China. The Pentagon's sole mission is "denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan". The directive was summarized by the WaPo authors with:
[The Pentagon's] force planning ... will consider conflict only with Beijing when planning contingencies for a major power war
[WaPo]
So, little wars like the ones in Palestine and Yemen are all fine, but for major ones, ignore every nation but China. This begs the question of why?
TSMC
Taiwan Semi-conductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC) provides almost two-thirds of the world's chip manufacturing, reported TrendForce on 2024-12-05:
the revenue rankings of the top ten wafer foundries remain unchanged in the third quarter, with TSMC maintaining its leading position with a market share of nearly 65%.
TSMC dominates supply for civilian and military computational tech, including the latest "strategic" darling of large dataset machine learning, aka "AI".
Simplicius provided a hint towards US strategic manufacturing:
US officials having already long promised to destroy TSMC should China ever come close to seizing it, with parallel lines already being opened up in Arizona.
By extension, if and when the US has established a basis for control of its own replacement for TSMC, then Taiwan can serve as a new Ukraine to launch a war with China. This will likely take years, during which Europe can rearm around a frozen conflict in Ukraine.
The US is beset with several challenges. Its indebted economy is limiting its flexibility. This is exacerbated by the alternative financial institutions which BRICS+ have created and are continuing to build which undermine the US dollar's reserve status dominance. An interim annoyance is that its military's arsenals are bare and recruitment is troublesome.
A military-economic restructuring is required, as set out in various policy recommendations, including Project 2025's.
Pentagon's supply lines run from China
In Alastair Crooke's most recent article he presents paradoxes inherent in the US restructuring.
the strong dollar (buoyed by a global synthetic demand for the reserve currency) has eviscerated America’s real economy – its manufacturing base ... [Its] currency appreciation suppresses the development of productive export sectors, and turns politics into a zero-sum conflict over resource rents.
[Crooke]
By 'resource rents', Crooke is referring to the US "FIRE" economy as described by Michael Hudson (Financialization, Insurance and Real Estate). To maximize profits US manufacturing relocated overseas, particularly to southeast Asia during the "Tiger economy" 90's. Trump's proposed use of tariffs to rebuild a US manufacturing economy suffers from a wide range of problems summarized in Bernard's most recent article from Moon of Alabama:
To build or regain manufacturing capacity requires well coordinated long term projects. Research, training, infrastructure development, capital allocation and market protection all need to work together over several years if not decades.
Pursuing just one of these measure - tariffs, and likely only for a short time, will not change any of the related problems in other fields.
The 'invisible hand' of the markets will respond to Trump's moves by showing him a very visible finger.
This was insightfully commented upon by S Brennan who suggested the policy stability exhibited by China is a key ingredient for any success:
Successful "wafer foundry" (chip production) manufacturing will require secure supply of Rare Earth Metals. This is one resource base within "critical minerals" named in Project 2025 and found in Trump's policies of attempting to annex Greenland and demanding mineral leases from Ukraine.
Another “critical mineral” is Lithium for batteries. Land-locked Bolivia possesses the largest known deposits. Oligarch Musk used his own "Social Media" to declare his attitude to securing resource supply when responding to the election in Bolivia which installed a government after President Evo Morales was forced to flee to Mexico:
[I will never tire of re-issuing this tweet.]
Returning to the US economy:
At last year’s Senate hearing with Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve Chair, [US Vice President] Vance asked the Fed Chairman whether the U.S. dollar’s status as the global Reserve Currency might have some downsides. [It was suggested that] the dollar’s global role contributed to financialization at the expense of investment in the real economy.
[Crooke]
The lack of effective manufacturing in the US Military Industrial Complex was exposed during the lost Ukraine war in which Russia outproduced NATO by a factor of 4 to 1, admitted by current NATO Secretary Rutte in January and warned of by RAND Corp 6 months earlier.
There is a sticky problem in solving this, as Crooke noted the Pentagon has been warning about for years:
the Reserve Currency (and consequentially strong dollar) has pushed many U.S. military supply lines out to China. It makes no sense, the Pentagon argues, for the U.S. to depend on Chinese supply lines to provide the inputs to U.S. military manufactured weapons – by which it would then fight China.
[Crooke]
The US has snookered itself behind the components for its desired future warfare tech being located either in the hands of its adversaries or located on the territory which it wishes to use to begin a war with its sole "pacing threat".
No ducks are in a row.
Iran
Discussions over Trump's latest bellicose rhetoric to bomb Iran to smithereens may benefit from the above "leak" and military-economic analysis. The Pentagon has been instructed to not plan for a war of the scale required to lay waste to Iran. Neither does it have the weaponry in stock, except for gazillions of bombs.
Despite the emotional tone in Ritter's most recent commentary with Larry Johnson on Dialogue Works, his warning of the risk to Iran's governing authorities from a "decapitation" type attack involving both inhumane bombing and precision missilery by the Empire Duo of the US and Israel seems well founded. Immoral those at the CIA and Mossad's operations departments may be, but practiced they are in toppling governments. A regime change in Iran would be a disaster for the BRICS+ and SCO projects
Disgusting though it may taste, taking the pill of publicly reducing the volume of its 60% enriched Uranium stockpiles may well be the prudent strategic move for Iran. Russia and China will most certainly be discussing these and related matters with their strategic partner. Israel and the US can forget about any limitations to Iran's missile capabilities or capacity. Whatever Iran states publicly, its involvement with Shia based national independence organisations which also oppose the brutality of Israel is certain to continue.
The US is making a show of its threat, relocating bombers to Diego Garcia and using large capacity air lift of military materiel to bases in the Gulf. The bottom line, echoed by Johnson, is that Iran's air defenses are not damaged, but formidable. Israel turned tail last time before entering Iranian airspace. Almost a year has elapsed for Iran to augment its capabilities with new systems and technology from Russia further facilitated by their strategic partnership treaty (which completed the triple bi-laterals linking the China-Russia-Iran triangle).
The question is whether the US military leadership, the only "adults in the room", will allow Trump to roll the dice at the risk of US military personnel and assets, the state of Israel and the world economy upon a Trumpian whim. Encouraging Iran to reduce the slim risk even further is the strategic triplet’s risk calculus. The key timeline is October, 2025, when the JCPOA expires, removing the threat of U.N. Security Council veto-proof snapback sanctions on Iran.
Netanyahu can't last forever, especially given the fractured state of current Israeli politics. Israel is destroying itself and taking the US down with it. A careful strategy of giving them the rope to continue to hang themselves seems the sensible approach, irrespective of the humanitarian catastrophes they are pursuing. How that strategy is to be played is likely a key topic of discussion between Tehran, Moscow and Beijing.
Scotland in, Israel out
The current herd of European political leaders are disoriented by the stench of their own propaganda. They cannot admit to the reality of their defeat. Not only have they, the host nations of former colonial empires, been abandoned by their savior, the US, but have been defeated by their mythic enemy, Russia. Their statures are irrevocably reduced to bit players. Neither half of the desperately reformed entente of France and Britain deserve their veto wielding permanent seats at the U.N. Security Council. India outweighs them both in geopolitical heft.
Scottish Independence advocate, former British Diplomat, first whistleblower of the CIA's torture and rendition program, Wikileaks associate and friend of the Assange family, Craig Murray, has returned to his roots. His most recent article summarizes the decisive argument that Scotland is a colony of England made in a new publication: Liberation Scotland. Scotland has a right to seek its independence in the same tradition as the rest of Britain's colonies.
[A map of British Army outposts in Scotland, 1745-56. See Murray.]
Support for the founding principles of the U.N. and a reform of the composition of the U.N. Security Council has been a bedrock of BRICS+ policy. In these changing geopolitical times, especially due to the U.N. Security Council's impotence to intervene in a genocide, this BRICS+ policy may resurface. There are multiple routes for it.
If, as Murray suggests, Scotland engages with the anti-colonial bodies of the U.N., Britain may be caught between relinquishing Scotland and retaining its veto. Another route towards change may be the removal of Israel from the U.N.
The case for the later is extremely strong. Israel has never fully complied with any Security Council resolution compeling it regarding the 80 year dispute with Palestine. Many it has simply ignored. It has killed more U.N. workers than any other state. Of all U.N. members, Israel is the rogue state.
While the current US regime is short on competence, as demonstrated in the Signal-gate scandal, the same is not true for the senior BRICS+ and SCO member states. China, Russia, India and Iran can walk, chew gum and plan multiple diplomatic initiatives at the same time. Given the downscaling of industrial warring implied by the latest Hegseth leak and the corresponding economic analysis, a window of opportunity may be presenting itself for U.N. reform.
How the aspirations of former colonial, then Non-Aligned Movement member states are incorporated into a political reformation of the U.N. may well be one of the most interesting elements of what looks to be a short term interregnum in industrial power warfare.
Postscript
This newsletter has skipped the 20,000 word NYT article in which Entous informed the misled that all of the major decisions of the NATO-Russia Ukraine war were made by US/NATO military command. The reason for the omission is that this community was not a part of the misled.
The US goes not give away billions of dollars advanced, deadly military hardware and let other people target it. That would be insanely reckless. Letting them die in a lost war is just cynically immoral.
Biden Lied About Everything, Including Nuclear Risk, During Ukraine Operation; Matt Taibbi; Racket News; 2025-03-31
New York Times Fantasy Tale of Ukraine's Almost Great Victory Over Russia; Larry C. Johnson; SONAR21; 2025-03-30
TG 1848: "New York Times" Non-Scoop: U.S. Was Involved In Ukraine War From The Start; Peter Lavelle and George Szamuely; The Gaggle with Peter and George; 2025-03-30
or support this work via Buy Me A Coffee or Patreon.
Sources
Liberation Scotland; Craig Murray; Craig Murray; 2025-04-02
Whiplash Effect as "Pissed Off" Trump Flips Again; Simplicius; Simplicius' Garden of Knowledge; 2025-04-02
South Korea, China, Japan agree to promote regional trade as Trump tariffs loom; Reuters; Archive.today; 2025-03-31
Secret Pentagon memo on China, homeland has Heritage fingerprints - The Washington Post; Washingtonpost; Archive.today; 2025-04-02
Tariffs Won't Solve The Bigger Problems; b.; Moon of Alabama; 2025-04-02
S Brennan comment
Project 2025: Trump's Policy Selection; YesXorNo; 2025-02-25
Advanced Processes and Chinese Policies Drive 3Q24 Global Top 10 Foundry Revenue to Record Highs; TrendForce; 2024-12-05
'We will coup whoever we want': Elon Musk and the overthrow of democracy in Bolivia; Peoples Dispatch; Peoples Dispatch; 2020-07-28
AMB. Charles Freeman : Will Russia and China Defend Iran?; Napolitano interviews Freeman; Judging Freedom; 2025-04-01
Ray McGovern & John Helmer: Iran warns the US, Russia foresees catastrophe—tensions explode!; Alkhorshid interviews Helmer & McGovern; Dialogue Works; 2025-04-02
At the end, Helmer notes that he has a family connection to the CIA coup against Australian Prime Minister Whitlam and reveals for the first time his first hand knowledge of one aspect of the coup.
The Coup was covered in this newletter in: AUSUK : A Trilateral Pantomime and a Dance Down History; YesXorNo; 2021-09-22
Houthis Against Trump: Inside Yemen's Defiant Stand | Pepe Escobar Interview; Johnson interviews Escobar; Counter Currents; 2025-04-01
Alastair Crooke : Russia Flourishes Under US Sanctions; Napolitano interviews Crooke; Judging Freedom; 2025-03-31
Col. Larry Wilkerson on Trump’s Shocking Plan: Bomb Iran & Hit Russia with Tariffs; Alkhorshid interviews Wilkerson; Dialogue Works; 2025-03-31
Max Blumenthal : Netanyahu’s Domestic Woes.; Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom; Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom; 2025-04-02
Larry C. Johnson & Scott Ritter: Why War with Iran Would Be America's Biggest Mistake; Alkhorshid interviews Johnson & Ritter; Dialogue Works; 2025-04-01
Copyleft: CC0
On this, I dont know if this is any hope.
"....The question is whether the US military leadership, the only "adults in the room", will allow Trump to roll the dice at the risk of US military personnel and assets, the state of Israel and the world economy upon a Trumpian whim......"
The first then Trump sent Hegseth to to was to purge the top leadership of the military to remove anyone who was plausiblely a sensible professional military leader and not a blind "yes, sir" man:
https://www.wionews.com/world/us-president-donald-trump-fires-black-air-force-general-charles-cq-brown-pentagon-pete-hegseth-8745774
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/defense-secretary-revokes-mark-milleys-security-detail-orders-ig-revie-rcna189767
https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/who-are-lisa-franchetti-and-james-slife-pete-hegseth-fires-tor-navy-and-air-force-officials-article-118467475
So if you are looking for adults, well they have been kicked out of the room. The room has a demented old Trump, a juveline Hegseth, and and incomprehensible cipher in Gabbard as head of National Intelligence.
There'ss great quote from a very good piece on this issue:
Trump’s nationalist conservative white Christian agenda
March 03, 2025 by Deborah Veneziale
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/03/03/trumps-nationalist-conservative-white-christian-agenda/
"......Another dangerous sign is that Trump did something unusual last week and fired the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and replaced him with right-wing Lt. General Dan Caine, whom he met in Iraq and then again at CPAC (a right-wing political conference) in 2019. This was designed, of course, to remove any military restraints on the White House, which now has its own man. He is considered an unusual pick as he has not held lower positions before being selected for this position. At CPAC, Trump recalled the general saying, “‘I love you, sir. I think you’re great, sir. I’ll kill for you, sir.’”30
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated he will fire the judge advocates general’s service, or JAGs. They are military lawyers who administer the military code of justice for the Army, Navy, and Air Force.31 It is, ipso facto, an ominous sign....."
The thing is Iran wont really survive in the long run by reducing their stocks of enriched plutonium. I mean Israel actually HAS nuclear weapons, they attack their neighbours like eveyr week, they have committed genocide for years on end....and the zionist-controlled "west" has no problems with Israel having nuclear weapons. Iran made a deal with the Obama government (which cut the zionists and their tool Hillary Clinton out of the loop), and the first thing the next US government (zionist controlled Trump I admin) did was to renege on the deal - because they NEED to have tension as a PR excuse for what they want to do, which is to attack Iran and splinter it - like Libya, Syria, etc.
So that's just an excuse. No deal will ever save Iran from attack by the zionists. Only defensive capability can save them.
You could even look at Syriia where Assad's father at one point actually bombed shias in Lebanon in cahoots with the US - was still discarded. Iraq where Saddam killed like a million Iranians for the US - didnt save his skin. Gaddafi let the westerners in to his country's oil business and gave up the hunt for nuclear weapons, "donated" to their politicians and sent his son to study at LSE - didnt save his skin.
They zionist controlled "west", hate the muslims, well because they hate muslims and further, because they want their lands and resources. They are a hateful, greedy and murderous gang. This is the reality.