Fulmination, fury, and futility

By newseditors // 2025-07-29

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Eighty years ago, when World War II ended, U.S. rulers’ belief in war and empire was understandable. The U.S. had won the war at relatively low cost compared to the carnage and devastation in Europe and Asia. It had the atomic bomb and the only intact industrial plant. Millions of men were returning from the war raring to produce and procreate. The U.S. was the undisputed master of the world, and the U.S. empire was at its peak. (Article by Robert Gore republished from StraightLineLogic.com) World War II may turn out to be the apotheosis of war. It certainly has been for the U.S., which hasn’t won a war of any consequence since. Empire has been a curse rather than a blessing, except for those who profit from it, win or lose. Widespread acquisition of nuclear weapons has meant that another world war could mean the end of humanity.

Under the shadow of that threat, war has evolved such that in nonnuclear conflicts, increasing amounts of blood and treasure are expended for either minimal gains or outright losses. Fueled by relentless technological development that both lowers the relative cost and increases the effectiveness of resistance, irregular, asymmetric warfare has stymied the designs of those who would acquire territory, resources, and political control via the traditional means of invasion, offensive war, and occupation.

Col. Harry G. Summers Jr. begins his book, On Strategy: The Vietnam War in Context, by relaying the following conversation: “‘You know you never defeated us on the battlefield,’ said the American colonel. The North Vietnamese colonel pondered this remark a moment. ‘That may be so,’ he replied, ‘but it is also irrelevant.’”

“Winning Battles, Losing Wars,” Lt. Gen. James W. Dubick, December 2, 2014

From Vietnam, the U.S. power structure should have learned its lesson—warfare had changed dramatically. That it didn’t, as demonstrated by subsequent history, can be attributed to both stupidity and cupidity. There are always people who can’t detect the obvious, especially in government. However, greed is the more telling explanation. Long, drawn-out wars like Vietnam enriches those who finance and supply them.

That parasitic cabal wouldn’t have minded if the Vietnam War was still ongoing. (If it were, there would be plenty of propagandists claiming to see “the light at the end of the tunnel.”) Fortunately for the cabal, the U.S. keeps repeating its Vietnam insanity (by now, most of us, not being insane, don’t expect a different result) and the funding, size, influence, and power of the military-industrial-intelligence complex and allied institutions—mainstream media, academia, think tanks, etc.—has grown disproportionately.

U.S. insanity is playing out twice again in its wars with Russia and Iran. If a symptom of insanity is an inability to distinguish between reality and one’s self-generated illusions, coupled with an insistence that the world play along with those illusions, then Trump is symptomatic, which makes him quite dangerous.

Ukraine demonstrates the realities of modern war. Putin recognized them before he initiated Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO). Ukraine as an extension of NATO to Russia’s doorstep was existentially unacceptable. So too was Ukraine’s neo-Nazi dominated government and its treatment of its Russian-speaking citizens, particularly in the four oblasts of eastern Ukraine, which are more Russian than Ukrainian. The SMO’s territorial objectives were initially limited to their annexation. Putin knew that conquering the entirety of Ukraine would entail endless insurgency—encouraged and supplied by the U.S. and Europe—from the anti-Russia western half of the country, a potential quagmire.

Fresh from ignominiously ending the U.S.’s own quagmire in Afghanistan, the Biden administration ignored Putin’s efforts to attain Russia’s goals peacefully. The U.S. had built up Ukraine’s military since the Obama-sponsored Maidan coup in 2014, and the Biden administration welcomed the SMO.

It would use Ukraine to effect a neocon pipe dream: regime change in Russia, Balkanizing the country, and corporate exploitation of Russia’s mineral and natural resources. The assumptions were that proxy Ukraine would inflict military defeat on Russia, or at least embroil it in a long, inconclusive, and debilitating debacle, while sanctions would destroy Russia’s economy and drive Putin from office.

Nothing went as hoped. Biden left Trump with a war that Ukraine and its U.S. and European sponsors are losing. Russia has established battlefield dominance, showcasing best-in-class weaponry and mastery of new cutting edge military tactics, particularly in the use of drones. Its civilian economy has grown despite the ramp up of military production. The ruble has strengthened. Non-Western export markets are thriving. Among the 7 billion global majority, Russia is widely admired and has become a leader of the multipolarity movement.

So far, Trump has shown no ability to deal with the two salient realities: Russia is winning the war, and Putin won’t budge on Russia’s basic demands. Trump’s grasp of reality seems increasingly tenuous as egomania devolves to megalomania. It must drive Trump crazier to confront a man who means what he says and is unmoved by Trump’s fulminations and fury. Trump’s latest ultimatum will meet the same fate as earlier ones.

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