Karen Kwiatkowski on the Iran war: a tale of two empires

Our military footprint in the Gulf and the region has contracted; this will continue.  What we just watched over the past 100 days was an unusually vivid moment in the long slow collapse of the US military and financial empire. 

Conversely, tiny Israel saw its fluid borders expand in all four directions.  The cover of this war coincided with new bases in Somaliland, new gas fields through occupation of southern Lebanon and Gaza, massive Israeli expansion through land and political purchase in Greece, Cyprus, and Albania, and the exponential erasure of Gazans, Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians. 

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A truly defensive military and intelligence apparatus, at a fifth or even a tenth of what we spend today, as well as a structural jettisoning of special alliances that animate the current defense budget and focus, including but not limited to Israel, are now within reach for the US, in part because of what happened over the past 100 days.  The empire will oppose any changes in this direction, but our dry shell of an empire has few choices. 

In a strange way Trump will bring the troops home, and end US wars of choice, and like the captain of the Titanic, he will ride the ship, damaged by arrogance and overreach, into the deep. 

But before the empire fades, it retrenches, and global war-mongering becomes totalitarianism at home, national intelligence becomes domestic surveillance, AI looks inward to identify potential enemies of the state, and maps their communities for decimation or economic lockdown.

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Today, we are in the midst of the collapse of two empires, one tiny and vicious, the other lumbering and lazy.  These two empires suffer different illusions, but Israel, under fascist Zionism, has dibs on discipline and seeks to rule.

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US imperial retrenchment has been happening under our very noses, slowly at first with our devalued currency and never-ending wars, but the pace is quickening.  Notably in this 250th year after the Declaration of Independence, every American needs to be prepared for war at home.

~ Karen Kwiatkowski, "The US Empire is Retrenching, Bringing Imperialism Home," LewRockwell.com, June 15, 2026

 

Donald Jeffries on U.S. support of Israel

Since the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, the Middle East has been a tinderbox of ancient ethnic hostilities.  Israel fought four major wars against neighboring countries like Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, in its first twenty five years alone.  Since the neocons took control of U.S. foreign policy during the Reagan administration, America has been a consistent presence there, hovering in the background like the big brother waiting to pounce on any perceived slight to the younger sibling.  We fought the Gulf “War” (really, don’t you have to have two sides for a real war?) in 1989, for no other reason than to protect Israeli interests.  U.S. envoy April Glaspie famously told former CIA asset Saddam Hussein that if he invaded the tiny artificial oil oligarchy of Kuwait, we wouldn’t interfere.  Of course, that was a lie.  The only people cheering on such lunacy were the leaders of Israel. 

I lost count of how many times we bombed Iraq in the subsequent years. Our embargo killed over a million Iraqis, including over 500,000 children.  We ventured into Afghanistan for no reason whatsoever.  Well, except that Israel requested it. And that’s all that matters in “our” defense department.  No one says “no” to Israel.  Except John F. Kennedy.  We all know what happened to him.  Obama became embroiled in Syria and Yemen because Israel wanted it.  They’re like a collective, spoiled trust fund baby.  Donald Trump, after rightly criticizing Obama for bombing Syria, did so himself when ordered to.  You know exactly who gave the orders.  And now, we may become deeply embroiled in Israel’s war with Iran, again at Israel’s request.  Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen- none of them have ever done anything to us.  We have no beef with any of them.  But Israel does.  All of this is in their interests, not ours.

~ Donald Jeffries, "The Explosion of Jewish Fatigue Syndrome," Tired of naked emperors, June 29, 2025

Kevin Duffy on American imperialism and the Israel alliance

At the core of American imperialism is the noble cause.  Woodrow Wilson got the ad campaign started when he coined the phrase “making the world safe for democracy.”  In 2009, the Navy came up with the slogan “a global force for good.”  (This lasted all of five years.)  The mask is now off Israel.  Its carefully cultivated image as an enlightened, progressive, tolerant democracy has been shattered… not good for the U.S. global brand.  America’s longstanding policy of unconditional support for Israel is now in question, i.e. the imperial delusion is bumping into harsh reality.

~ Kevin Duffy, "The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Investment implications," The Coffee Can Portfolio, January 6, 2024

Ian Bremmer on the fragility of U.S. support for Israel

I would say that Biden could not be more supportive of Israel following the October 7th attacks...  But Generation Z, young people in the U.S., support the Palestinian position more strongly than they support Israel.  And you have seen that particularly on college campuses across the country, but also more broadly.  And many on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.  And I'm not just talking about "the Squad" and Rashida Tlaib and AOC.  I'm talking more broadly are increasingly uncomfortable with the extent of the Israeli military strikes against Hamas and the Palestinian civilians in Gaza.  All of the human destruction that we are all witnessing right now.

And President Biden has made it clear to the Israeli war cabinet that the ability that the ability of the United States to continue to provide unconstrained support for Israel is a window that will narrow if the present levels of atrocities continue.  So the conditions for peace are not just about making sure the Palestinians have an opportunity to live; they're also about making sure the Americans can continue to support Israel the way they have here-to-fore.

I think it is not guaranteed that in another four weeks time, the U.S. will still be willing to provide the kind of military equipment - high-tech military equipment and support - that they have provided to Israel historically if Israel continues to fight the war the way they have been fighting it.  Even the United States, Biden and his cabinet and core members of the Senate and the House, are facing that pressure from their own progressive wing.  And that is going to grow over time.

I also think that this is a risk for Biden in 2024 because this war right now is primarily about Gaza and Hamas.  But there are American carrier strike groups in the eastern Med[iterranean] and in the Gulf.  They've already been involved in direct strikes against Iranian Shia proxies in Syria.  There will surely be more of those strikes in the coming weeks.  American servicemen and women have already taken casualties.  Not deaths, not so far, but actually injured troops because of the knock-on impact of the war between Israel and Hamas.  So if it turns out that the United States is directly involved in a Middle Eastern war that Biden has not sold to the American people - he hasn't justified - you go from no wars started under the Trump administration to two wars started under the Biden administration.  Neither of them started by Biden, but both of them the American taxpayers are paying for and one of which the Americans might be taking casualties.  That is a very hard thing to run on if you are President Biden.  And they know it.

It also, the distraction of the Middle East - and President Zelensky has been saying this - has made it harder for people to focus on the contined support for Ukraine, especially given a counteroffensive that has failed.  So you now have these two massive global foreign policy crises, both of which are not looking so great for the United States, as we head into 2024.  I expect that Trump, when he becomes the Republican nominee, and that certainly looks very likely at this point, will make a meal out of that.

~ Ian Bremmer, "Political scientist Ian Bremmer on the Isreali-Palestinian conflict," Big Think, 44:45 mark, November 9, 2023