Prof. John Mearsheimer discusses how the dramatic developments in the Ukraine War conflict with NATO’s “Ukraine is winning” narrative. Prof. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago
Eurocontrol, an intergovernmental organization that coordinates air traffic control management across Europe, notified Poland and Romania’s air traffic control agencies earlier this month that it was freezing the funds after Pfizer enforced an April court ruling in Brussels.
The April 1 ruling requires Poland and Romania to pay Pfizer about $1.5 billion and $640 million, respectively, plus interest and fees, for additional vaccine doses, per a 2021 contract signed between the European Commission — the EU’s executive branch — and Pfizer.
Poland and Romania refused further COVID-19 vaccine deliveries in 2022, citing falling demand for the shots, according to Bloomberg. Poland also cited financial pressures it was facing after taking in refugees fleeing the conflict in Ukraine.
Brussels Signalreported Poland sold or donated some of its surplus vaccine doses. According to Romanian political scientist Dragos Moldovean, “Romania was among the European countries with the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates.”
These actions led Pfizer to sue the countries in 2023, resulting in the April 1 ruling.
In a statement provided to The Defender, the Warsaw Enterprise Institute (WEI) said that the case, which is still ongoing pending the two countries’ appeal, is being heard in Belgium because the EU’s contract is governed by Belgian law.
Polish and Romanian authorities have said they will appeal the ruling. Polish public broadcaster TVP World reported that Poland sought a delay in the enforcement of the April 1 ruling pending its appeal, but that the Belgian court rejected this request.
Dutch attorney Meike Terhorst, who is not involved in the lawsuit, called Pfizer’s actions “outrageous and unethical,” arguing that “it could potentially endanger the safety of flights to or from Poland and/or Romania” by depriving those countries’ air traffic control authorities of funding required for their operations.
Łukasz Wojdyga, director of the WEI’s Center for Strategic Studies, took a different view. He said that while Pfizer is exercising its rights under the law, which allow it to freeze the disputed funds even despite the expected appeals, the focus should be on the flaws in the EU’s contract. He said:
“Even if this form of enforcement is allowed under Belgian law, targeting the main source of funding for an institution responsible for air-traffic safety strikes me as disproportionate and irresponsible.
“At the same time, a creditor has the right to enforce a court judgment and protect the interests of its shareholders through any lawful means.
“For that reason, the main focus should not be on blaming Pfizer for pursuing its claim. It should be on how the contract was negotiated, approved, and signed in the first place.”
Some legal and policy experts who spoke with The Defender suggested that Pfizer had other options available to it rather than immediately freezing the two countries’ funds held in Belgium. Other experts suggest that the EU’s contract with Pfizer is, itself, invalid, as it was signed through a dubious and potentially illegal process.
EU hasn’t revealed Pfizer CEO text messages, despite ruling
The EU-Pfizer contract has long faced scrutiny. For Wojdyga, the central question isn’t whether Pfizer is entitled to collect what it is owed. It’s how European and national authorities allowed such a “large, expensive and one-sided agreement to be signed, leaving taxpayers to carry most of the risk.”
According to Brussels Signal, the 35 billion euro ($40 billion) contract between the EU and Pfizer “was one of the largest in EU procurement history.” It was signed amid “claims that the EU may have paid up to fifteen times the production cost per dose, raising concerns that billions in taxpayer funds were overpaid.”
There are also questions about how European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen negotiated the contract with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, and about potential conflicts of interest between the two parties.
Last year, the European Court of Justice ruled that the European Commission violated EU law by denying The New York Times’ request to review text messages related to the contract between von der Leyen and Bourla.
The European Commission claimed it didn’t have the text messages. But according to the ruling, the commission did not provide “plausible explanations” to justify “the non-existence or non-possession” of the documents. The commission previously claimed the texts didn’t qualify as documents, according to Politico.
In 2023, the European Parliament blocked an attempt to cross-examine von der Leyen regarding the text messages. The previous year, Bourla refused to testify before the European Parliament about the contract terms.
According to Brussels Signal, “scrutiny has been directed at potential conflicts of interest involving von der Leyen’s family,” as her husband Heiko “is the medical director at Orgenesisi, a biotech company that received EU funds and partnered with Pfizer.”
According to activist Frederic Baldan, CEO of CEBiz:
“Ursula von der Leyen, without any mandate, bypassed the committees and negotiated directly with Albert Bourla via Signal messages programmed to self-destruct. She thus circumvented the anti-corruption safeguards of her own Commission. The price increased in an inexplicable manner and the quantities ordered became insane.”
Wojdyga noted that the commission did not appeal the 2025 ruling in time, “making the ruling final.” Yet, the text messages still haven’t been released. Gheorghe Piperea, a member of the European Parliament, said that “the content of those messages remains secret to this day.”
According to Romanian political scientist Dragos Moldoveanu, questions remain over how the parties determined the number of doses each country would receive under the contract.
“Romania ordered 120 million doses of the vaccine, based on a ‘strategy adopted at the EU level,’ even though Romania’s population is less than 20 million people,” Moldoveanu said.
For Piperea, the EU-Pfizer contract “ought never to have existed” in the first place, because the EU took on powers it doesn’t have under the treaties of the European Union.
“The Commission violated the principle of subsidiarity that governs the shared competences of the Commission and the member states. Health policy falls within the competence of the member states, not of the Commission. The member states may be supported in these health policies, but they may not be supplanted by the Commission,” Piperea said.
This also means that if Pfizer believed the contract terms were violated, it should have sought damages from the EU, not from individual states like Romania and Poland.
However, suing the EU would have revealed “that the exceedingly narrow circle of persons who conducted the negotiations — von der Leyen … together with two or three anonymous directors from the European Medicines Agency — possessed neither the competence nor the mandate to bind the member states to payments,” Piperea said.
Wojdyga said all 27 EU governments were represented on the steering board, while the joint negotiating team with Pfizer “included the Commission and seven member states, including Poland.”
The member states were responsible for placing orders, making payments and accepting delivery under the terms of the deal.
However, “the decision-making process matters,” Wojdyga said. “Once the terms of an agreement were presented, a member state had only five working days to opt out,” after which its acceptance was considered legally binding.
He added:
“So, governments technically had a choice. In reality, they had only a few days to assess complex, multiyear financial commitments in the middle of a pandemic, under intense political pressure and amid fears of vaccine shortages. That put national governments under considerable time pressure and limited their ability to carry out a full legal, financial, and public health review.”
Baldan, who initiated a 2023 criminal case against Pfizer challenging the contract, said that in closed session, lawyers for Hungary and Poland confirmed they had “never given any negotiating mandate to von der Leyen” and that the vaccine orders were placed at the EU level and were “inexplicable” to them.
Baldan said the case resulted in a 1,000-page report by the Belgian Federal Police’s anti-corruption unit, finding that “there are sufficient elements to establish the offenses.”
However, the Belgian police handed over the investigation to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, which moved to have it annulled.
“This is what allowed Pfizer to resume its civil proceedings and obtain judgments against the member states that refused to pay,” Baldan said.
Has Pfizer endangered air traffic and public safety in Poland and Romania?
Questions remain over whether Pfizer’s freezing of Poland and Romania’s air traffic control funds held by Eurocontrol will put air travel and public safety in question.
According to TVP World, the frozen funds “are critical” because they make up more than 80% of the revenue of the country’s air traffic control agency, Polish Air Navigation Services Agency (PANSA, or PAZP).
Without the funds, the agency “could quickly lose financial liquidity, making it impossible to pay hundreds of air traffic controllers, whose work is essential for every passenger aircraft taking off, landing or safely flying through Polish airspace,” Brussels Signal reported.
PANSA could also lose the ability to maintain critical infrastructure, including radar installations and communication systems. “For ordinary citizens, this could mean cancelled flights and even the closure of Poland’s airspace,” Brussels Signal reported.
Romania Insiderreported that the frozen funds equate to 0.2% of its GDP, posing “a significant burden at a time when the government is attempting to reduce the fiscal deficit.”
Piperea said the April ruling “arrived at a most inopportune moment in Romania, in the midst of recession and a major budgetary deficit.”
“Pfizer places the public in danger by leaving without funds the air-traffic control agency ROMATSA, and the state budget, which is already insufficient and cannot meet pensions, allowances, indemnities for persons with disabilities, and the like.”
Wojdyga said Pfizer’s actions are legal — but raise questions.
“I would not automatically equate the freezing of funds owed to Poland’s and Romania’s air navigation agencies with an immediate threat to passenger safety. Both agencies are still operating, and both governments have said they will protect their financial stability and keep services running. Pfizer also has the right to enforce its claims through lawful means.
“That said, targeting the main source of funding for agencies responsible for air traffic safety is bound to raise concerns, especially since neither agency was a party to the vaccine contract.”
“Pfizer is unlikely to close Poland’s airspace. By targeting PAZP’s revenue, however, it has shown how a poorly designed public contract can create problems far beyond the original subject of the agreement,” the WEI wrote.
The Italian mafia is seeking to buy up some of the 800,000 firearms reportedly missing or stolen from Ukraine since 2022, including drones and other advanced arms, senior prosecutors have warned.
Some 780,465 items sent to Ukraine have reportedly disappeared since the escalation of the conflict, including around 149,000 during the first five months of 2026. The Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper reported on Wednesday that much of the arsenal consisted of European military supplies intended for Kiev.
The outlet noted that European law enforcement authorities have struggled to track the flow of these arms, given that Western governments conceal the details of their extensive military shipments to Ukraine.
The weapons have since reportedly ended up on the European black market and are now said to have attracted the attention of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, which would like to upgrade its arsenal with military-grade systems.
Palermo chief prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia told Italy’s parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission this week that the criminal organization was trying to build a “quality arsenal” and has already obtained access to AK-47 rifles and powerful explosives.
De Lucia said that the mafia is also trying to obtain more advanced weaponry, such as mine-dropping drones, warning that Italian security services are not prepared to deal with such weapons systems.
Concerns over weapons leaking from Ukraine into European criminal networks have persisted since the early months of the conflict. Europol reported back in 2022 that arms were being trafficked into the EU for organized crime groups, with several countries, including Finland, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Spain, having since stated that weapons sent to Kiev had reached local criminals.
The latest report comes amid repeated corruption scandals involving Ukraine’s military and state institutions. Recent investigations have uncovered millions of dollars in illicit sales of military equipment and theft from military repair contracts and drone funds, alongside wider schemes involving defense procurement and foreign donations.
Commenting on the Italian prosecutor’s warning, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow had long warned that Western weapons sent to Kiev would spread through illicit markets and eventually threaten Ukraine’s European sponsors.
Zakharova explained that some of the weapons supplied to Kiev never actually reach their stated destination because of corruption, while those that do arrive are divided between the front, black-market buyers, and armed groups in other regions.
Russian officials have also accused Ukraine of supplying weapons and drone expertise to militants in Africa, while Mali has alleged that Kiev provided kamikaze drones to terrorist organizations operating in the Sahel.
NATO announced Thursday that the air forces of Italy, Spain, and Turkey will deploy fighter jets to the alliance’s eastern flank as part of efforts to reinforce air patrols and strengthen NATO air defense operations.
“The Italian Air Force, Spanish Air and Space Force and Turkish Air Force will deploy their fighter jets to contribute to the security of NATO airspace along the Eastern Flank, as part of the NATO Air Defence mission,” the alliance said in a statement.
NATO said the deployments are intended to support allied deterrence, protect its airspace, and reinforce military readiness along the eastern flank.
Turkey sends F-16 fighters to Estonia
NATO said Turkey will deploy five F-16 fighter aircraft and around 80 personnel to Estonia’s Amari Air Base for the first time.
The Turkish deployment will contribute to NATO’s air policing mission as the alliance continues rotating forces across its eastern members.
Italy will also send four Typhoon fighter jets and more than 100 personnel to Lithuania’s Siauliai Air Base.
Italy and Spain reinforce NATO air patrols
Spain will deploy seven F-18 fighter jets and around 200 personnel to Romania’s Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, according to NATO.
The Spanish deployment will also include an A400M aircraft for aerial refueling and three NH-90 helicopters assigned to counter-drone operations.
NATO said the new units will replace Portuguese, Romanian, and French forces currently involved in the alliance’s eastern flank air defense mission.
The deployments come as NATO continues strengthening its military presence along its eastern borders amid heightened tensions in Europe.
Russia warns of escalating NATO activity in Baltic
Russia accused NATO earlier this year of significantly expanding its military operations in the Baltic Sea, particularly near the Kaliningrad region, warning that the alliance’s growing presence poses risks to regional stability and international navigation.
Artem Bulatov, special envoy at the Russian Foreign Ministry, stated that NATO is intensifying efforts to enhance its combat capabilities and infrastructure in areas adjacent to Kaliningrad, pointing to a sustained military buildup under various operational frameworks.
According to Bulatov, NATO launched its Baltic Sentry mission in January 2025 under the stated aim of protecting critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, while continuing extensive air patrols and expanding the scope of its exercises.
Member states engaging in ‘provocative’ actions
He added that the scale and frequency of NATO drills have increased, alongside provocative actions by member states targeting vessels involved in transporting goods to and from Russia.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko warned that these activities are creating “serious threats” to international shipping routes and economic operations in the region, suggesting that NATO’s mission is effectively aimed at controlling key logistical corridors.
Grushko further argued that the alliance’s operations are designed to restrict the movement of goods linked to Russia, raising concerns in Moscow over the militarization of maritime routes in the Baltic.
Israel dragged America into another war, then sat back on the spectator bench and watched U.S. taxpayers foot the bill. Borrowed money burned into bombs. Billions more bled out at gas stations and in inflation, all to reopen a strait that was open before Donald was duped into fighting Benjamin’s war. Now Benjamin Netanyahu watches from a safe distance, gloating as missiles fly between the U.S. forces and Iran in a war he spent years pushing Washington to fight.
At home, flag-draped caskets of American soldiers arriving home from a war Israel instigated and American soldiers carried out. In Congress, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stood before the Senate requesting more money to keep the war running.
Lawmakers asked to sign the check for a war they never voted to authorize, fought for aims Washington did not set, with no accounting of when — or how— it ends.
In occupied Palestine, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich tells a settler conference that “Israel has no interest in joining the campaign . . . a confined campaign between Iran and the United States, is the correct [situation] and best for us [Israel].” In layman language, let’s sit and watch Americans die and pay for our war.
Exhibit A: the U.S. military is depleting its own missile-defense stockpiles defending its bases across the region, while Israel hoards its interceptors in reserve. Israel isn’t spending down its stockpile. It’s waiting for the moment American stocks run dry and the Gulf states are left exposed. When that moment comes, Israeli interceptors will become prized leverage, offered to the UAE and the rest of the Gulf at a price.
Last Sunday on Fox News, Netanyahu outlined to America his goals for the war against Iran. A foreign prime minister, on American airwaves, essentially setting the terms and the finish line for an American war, fought by American pilots, funded by American taxpayers, and now apparently concluded at Israel’s discretion. Whatever Trump negotiates, whatever Washington decides, Netanyahu has already told America it doesn’t matter. He isn’t waiting to end the war on Israel’s terms. He’s informing it.
But it is not only America’s war policy that runs through Tel Aviv. It is diplomacy and commerce too. When Washington signed a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia, and the deal was announced, ink dry, both governments on record. Within a day, President Trump reversed course, declaring the agreement was contingent on Saudi normalization with Israel.
Israeli officials do not even try to be diplomatic on how they run Washington policy. Before Trump added the new condition, Israel’s Culture and Sports Minister, Miki Zohar, told Army Radio that “Israel has been clear with the United States about its red lines.” Those are the words of a government that understands it holds a veto pen, set red lines, and where America listens.
Think about it, an Israeli minister speaks openly of red lines over an American commercial and strategic agreement with one of the world’s largest oil exporters, a country central to Gulf security architecture Washington has spent decades building. It did not matter that the Saudi deal serves American energy and strategic interests. It mattered only that Tel Aviv had not yet signed off.
The issue isn’t whether Israel tries to shape American war strategy, or whether its leaders draw red lines Washington isn’t allowed to cross. The real question is why American leaders, across the political spectrum, permit a strategically insignificant country to wield such extraordinary influence over the foreign policy of the world’s only superpower.
Israeli red lines prompted America’s Israel-first loyalists to abruptly discover the agreement was a nuclear proliferation threat. For decades, they have defended, excused, or ignored Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal. Yet the prospect of a Saudi civilian nuclear program suddenly provokes moral outrage. The issue was never stopping nuclear proliferation. It was about sequencing. They would be willing to kosher a Saudi civilian nuclear program the day after, not before, it recognizes Israel.
If Arab capitals want an American relationship that serves their own security and economic interests, they need to stop mistaking proximity for leverage. For years the strategy has been to buy access, funneling billions to powerful intermediaries like Jared Kushner, treating him as the private door into the Oval Office.
But Kushner is no neutral broker. He is an Israel-first advocate who built his post-White House fortune partly on Arab capital while shaping Middle East policy on Israel’s behalf and now uses his wealth to finance Jewish-only colonies built on stolen Palestinian land.
The United Arab Emirates lived this irony in hard numbers. Kushner sold Abu Dhabi on the Abraham Accords with a promise attached: normalize with Israel, and the most advanced American fighter jet in the world would follow, a $23 billion sale of fifty F-35s. The UAE delivered its half instantly, recognition, embassies, open skies. Washington delivered Israel every benefit of that deal. The jets never came. Years of “technical requirements,” stalled reviews, and quiet reversals later.
Trump wants to sell Saudi Arabia the promise of a commercial agreement, but deliver Israel an immediate recognition. The Arab cow gets milked for capital, investment, and diplomatic goodwill, and when the moment comes to deliver, the payoff is led instead to the Israeli altar. Every dollar spent courting Kushner, every concession made in good faith, has purchased not access but the illusion of it, never enough to collect on.
Arab regimes must understand that neither buying access to the president through Israel-first loyalists like Kushner, nor hosting the American bases that fight wars designed in and for Tel Aviv, will change U.S. policy — not while Israel holds the lobby power to dictate red lines American leaders dare not cross.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has issued a diplomatic warning to Bulgaria over reports that the country is preparing to host US military aircraft, while simultaneously securing assurances from Cyprus that foreign bases on its territory will not be used for hostile actions against the Islamic Republic.
In a telephone conversation with Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ventsislava Petrova on Thursday, Araghchi firmly condemned Sofia’s reported agreement to allow the United States to station military aircraft at the Bezmer air base.
Tehran views the move as a direct contribution to US military posturing and tension-building in West Asia.
“Allowing the territory of one state to be used by another state for the purpose of committing an act of aggression against a third state constitutes an act of aggression itself,” Araghchi stated, citing Article 3 of UN General Assembly Resolution 3314, which defines acts of aggression under international law.
The Iranian foreign minister emphasized that such a decision is unacceptable and contradicts the traditional friendly relations between the two nations, urging the Bulgarian government to urgently reconsider its stance.
He reiterated that the Islamic Republic will not hesitate to defend its national security and interests, warning that “any party that participates in any way in a military attack against Iran must bear responsibility for its consequences.”
In response, the Bulgarian foreign ninister recalled the historically good relations between the two countries, asserting that Bulgaria has no intention of participating in any war and reaffirming its commitment to diplomacy and regional de-escalation.
Securing neutrality in Cyprus
In a separate diplomatic push, Minister Araghchi spoke with Cypriot Foreign Minister Konstantinos Kombos, stressing the critical importance of preventing hostile forces from misusing foreign military bases stationed in Cyprus to target Iran.
The Cypriot foreign minister affirmed his country’s commitment to the principles of international law and the peaceful resolution of disputes.
Kombos announced that Cyprus has been in direct contact with the UK government and has received explicit assurances that the foreign military bases on the island will not be used against any country, including the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The diplomatic warnings come amid reports that the Bulgarian government is seeking parliamentary approval to station up to eight US aerial refueling tanker aircraft at the Bezmer military facility, located southeast of Sofia.
These aircraft are primarily used to extend the operational range of US or Israeli strike fighters, a move Tehran interprets as logistical preparation for potential military escalation.
The development occurs against a backdrop of heightened regional tensions.
Following the unraveling of a previous interim ceasefire, the United States has intensified its military footprint and aggressive rhetoric in the region.
Iranian officials, including Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei, have previously warned that any activity facilitating US attacks on Iran amounts to complicity in aggression and war crimes.
Tehran has consistently maintained that it will not tolerate its sovereignty being threatened by foreign military buildups in the region.
Donald Trump entered the July 7th/8th NATO summit having recently condemned the alliance as a “paper tiger” over its collective failure to abet the calamitous Zionist-American war on Iran and repeatedly threatened to withdraw US forces from Europe, with reveries of Greenland’s annexation still abounding. He left boasting of the intense “love” and “unity” within NATO, while praising member states for their reaffirmed commitment to spending ever-increasing vast sums on ‘defense’. Meanwhile, the Ukraine proxy war’s world-threatening continuation appears assured for potentially years to come.
As such, the NATO summit signifies a significant triumph in Britain’s never-ending battle to exploit the US Empire to further its own objectives. Highly revealing leaked files amply spell out how the alliance is a key mechanism by which Washington’s “interest” in Europe and West Asia is insidiously maintained, via London’s covert and overt machinations. NATO provides an invaluable “umbrella”, by which Britain projects economic, intelligence, military, and political power throughout these regions and the wider world, while countering competitors.
The documents were authored in March 2021 by Chris Donnelly, a veteran British military intelligence apparatchik who masterminded NATO expansion into the former Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, and Yugoslavia throughout the 1990s. Now an influential Ministry of Defense advisor guiding London and Kiev’s escalatory strategies in the proxy war, he writes in the leaks of Britain’s perpetual struggle to retain the “security” provided by “US military power.” This, combined with access to Washington’s globe-spanning intelligence network, “underpins our own position in the world.”
From Britain’s perspective, “the political solidarity between member nations” within NATO and “the permanent political and military mechanisms that enable collaboration between its members and with its partners,” are as vitally important as the alliance’s capacity for “collective defence and security.” For example, “interoperability” between NATO members is considered “both a political and a military asset” and “a valuable product”, enabling countries “with vastly different political and military systems to operate together.” That includes “[undertaking] complex and stressful military activities,” and other joint functions.
This makes NATO “a civilian-led political organisation… whose main tool is armed force,” intimately entrenched within its 32 members. Lacking any democratic structures internally and accountable to none externally, the alliance exerts enormous, often unseen influence over members’ constituent governments, security and intelligence services, militaries, police forces, and more. These “extensive political collaborative mechanisms” mean states can be corralled into adopting policies or taking actions regardless of local public will, or whether such moves actively harm their safety and/or national interests.
“Without the US, there is no NATO,” Donnelly notes. Hence, to “keep the US interested” in the alliance, Washington “must see a return on its (still very large and disproportionate) investment.” The 2026 NATO summit ended with European leaders pledging to plunge tens of billions into US-made military equipment for Kiev over this year and next, a prospect offering Washington quite some “return”. But the British have other means of encouraging and maintaining US hegemony, for their personal profit.
‘Symmetrical exchange’
Elsewhere, Donnelly writes of the “special relationship” – the “political/military/security/intelligence” alliance between Britain and the US, “which has existed since World War II.” He notes how from inception, Washington was driven “by how much the US needed something from the UK to help the US develop and maintain its superpower status.” In other words, “what the UK could provide the US… the US could not itself produce.” Accordingly, London “traditionally contributed” its historical “knowledge and experience” to Washington’s crusade for global domination.
This frequently entailed “intelligence-gathering and analysis; technical expertise, especially inventiveness, ideas, and scientific information; the experience of having dealt with a situation new to the US.” Meanwhile, “political and military support” was provided by London “wherever this supported US policy interests and to help the US get what it wanted in the world.” While Britain’s methods in every regard have evolved significantly over time, these ultimate underpinning and overriding objectives in so many matters military, intelligence, foreign, and even domestic have not changed:
“Being able to provide something the US wants and needs is still the only reliable way to get US respect and to maintain the ‘special relationship’… Today, this is translated into whatever will help the US maintain its position in the world, promote US interests… and ensure US economic well-being. If we can still provide something useful for the US, something they cannot do for themselves, then they will be prepared to reciprocate very generously.”
Donnelly frames this concord as a perpetual “barter deal” – not a “symmetrical exchange” or “issue of cost and payment,” as “if the US can buy what it is deficient in on the world market, then there is no basis for the ‘special relationship’.” He references Britain’s consistent “willingness and ability to deploy a significant contingent of effective army… to reinforce US military operations… readiness to share casualties… [and] continued readiness to host US forces on UK soil or on overseas dependencies” as historic pull factors.
Britain can also “employ other kinds of power to achieve an effect which supports US policy or interests.” This includes “economic power, political influence, a technical ability, such as cyber-warfare, or a civilian state-building or humanitarian relief capability.” Accordingly, files leaked by Edward Snowden indicate British signals intelligence agency GCHQ is acutely aware it “must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight” by its NSA ‘partner’, to reap vast US funding for elaborate foreign spying operations.
Donnelly concludes, “On balance, the special relationship is of real importance to the UK, but also of some worth to the US… The burden of sustaining the special relationship falls principally to the UK. The US may well lose out if the relationship fails, but it will not notice the loss as much as the UK will. However, the special relationship is neither permanent nor guaranteed. We cannot take it for granted. It needs to be worked at constantly, refreshed and renewed.”
‘Defense capabilities’
On the subject of renewal, Donnelly lamented how London’s utility to the US Empire had been “significantly diminished” over recent years. This resulted from the British Army’s “indifferent military performance in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the “run-down of our intelligence capability,” and “the perception (on the part of the US and other allies) the UK is no longer investing sufficiently in its military to be able to play the leading role it used to do in Europe, both as an operator and as a technical innovator.”
Donnelly moreover noted Britain “used to be at the cutting edge of some aspects of military thinking,” but had in many respects “lost this edge.” For example, “we can no longer instruct the US on how best to conduct counter-insurgency operations.” Furthermore, the “special relationship” was “put under pressure” by President Barack Obama’s “reorientation of US strategy to focus on China.” Instituted in 2011, this “pivot to the Pacific” was sustained under subsequent administrations, with varying degrees of intensity.
Donnelly cheered how “the Ukraine and Syrian conflicts have reawakened US interest a little” in Europe and West Asia, meaning “Russia can no longer be ignored” by Washington. Nonetheless, he warned, “we have not yet turned the corner.” Unmentioned by Donnelly was his personal role in disrupting Washington’s “pivot” toward China by inflaming the Ukrainian war, to ensure the Empire didn’t “ignore” Russia. He openly articulated this malign mission while testifying to a British parliamentary defense committee in July 2014.
Donnelly proposed establishing a permanent British “standing force” in the Baltics, to conduct military exercises on Russia’s border, while serving as a “tripwire” to “dissuade and deter” Moscow. He believed it “very important” for London to pursue this strategy, as “Britain’s leadership… will encourage the Americans to take a greater interest in NATO and reinforce their support of the organisation.” He added, “we have an important role to play in bringing the Americans in more,” as “US eyes” had recently been directed “away from Europe.”
Resultantly, London provocatively dispatched thousands of soldiers to Russia’s periphery. Moreover, Britain took the lead in training Ukrainian forces – including notorious Neo-Nazi paramilitary factions such as the Azov Battalion. At the time, Washington adhered to the “Obama Doctrine”, which stipulated the US should avoid escalation against Moscow and prohibited provision of “lethal aid” and other military assistance to Kiev. A February 2015Kyiv Post report on Britain’s training program quoted Donnelly at length, suggesting his central involvement in its delivery:
“This is just the sort of help Ukraine needs now. The British Army obviously brings considerable operational experience and a pretty good reputation.”
As Donnelly predicted in his defense committee testimony, Britain’s tutelage of Ukrainian forces had the desired effect of “bringing the Americans in more.” In July 2015, it was announced the US would formally begin training Kiev’s military by the end of the year. Still, a State Department spokesperson stressed the effort was merely “small unit training… to help strengthen Ukraine’s internal defense capabilities.” They firmly asserted Washington’s focus in the country remained on “nonlethal aid” and “there is no plan to change that.”
Fast forward to December 2017, and Trump greenlit the provision of weaponry to Kiev. It was among a number of hostile acts during his first term that ratcheted tensions between Washington and Moscow, placing Ukraine firmly on the warpath with Russia. The recent NATO summit, and subsequent pledges by the US to assist Ukraine directly with drone and patriot missile production, show the Empire has “turned the corner” at last. US “interest” in Europe is assured, for at least as long as the proxy conflict endures.
Encouraged by Ukraine’s sustained advances in drone warfare, Western media is abuzz with the idea that Kyiv just might be able to defeat Russia after more than four years of bitter fighting.
In May, TIMEhailed Ukraine’s drone industry as giving Kyiv “the cards to win without U.S. help.” Last month, CNN lauded Ukrainian drone strikes near Moscow as “a likely turning point” in the war. Earlier this month, Defense One even framed the conflict as a settled matter with the headline “How Ukraine won the first great robot war.”
But this isn’t the first time the press has played up Ukraine’s military capabilities, despite repeated setbacks on the battlefield. As experts warn RS, such coverage reinforces the idea that more military aid can still help Ukraine win back all of its territory, thus downplaying the need for a negotiated solution.
Overplaying Ukraine’s hand
As Daniel Davis, a military expert at Defense Priorities, tells RS, “western media narratives claiming Ukraine has ‘turned the tide’ do not survive contact with basic military reality.”
“Tactical Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries and supply hubs — like the recent hits on [Russian retailer] Wildberries near Moscow and St. Petersburg — make for dramatic television,” Davis wrote to RS, citing recent Ukrainian drone attacks within Russia. “They do not disrupt Moscow’s core ability to wage a long-term war of attrition.”
Michael Desch, an international relations professor at the University of Notre Dame, tells RS that drones alone cannot earn Ukraine a military victory. “Best Ukraine can do [with drones] is slow the Russians down a bit,” he said.
“There is no doubt that Ukraine has recently upped its medium- and deep-strike drone operations against Russia and has done some damage,” he shared. “The problem with the [mainstream media] coverage is that it ignores: a) Russia is doing the same [and] b) Russia is still making consistent gains on the ground.”
To Desch’s point, Russian forces continue, albeit slowly, to push westward into Eastern Ukraine. Both Russia and Ukraine say they have captured villages at the war’s frontlines.
More broadly, as Barry Posen, a political science professor at MIT, tells RS, “the press highlights anything that looks like positive news for Ukraine from the battlefield. And it tends to minimize Ukrainian setbacks.”
Posen cited Ukraine’s 2024 Kursk offensive as an episode where the media overplayed Kyiv’s prospects. “It was clear that this [offensive] was a diversion of scarce Ukrainian combat power to a mission that could not produce important military results. And it ended very badly for Ukraine,” he said.
The media similarly overhyped Ukraine’s unsuccessful counteroffensive in 2023, where Kyiv tried to retake Russian-held territory in southern and eastern Ukraine. “It turned into a horrendous sacrifice of soldiers on minefields and the drone-infested steppe,” Almut Rochowanski, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute, said. “No gain to Ukraine at all, but enormous human and material resources were squandered.”
Despite repeated military setbacks, many pro-Ukraine commentators “remain completely unfazed,” said Mark Episkopos, a research fellow in the Quincy Institute’s Eurasia Program.
“Retired U.S. Army officer Ben Hodges predicted that the Russian army will collapse by March 2022, and again by the end of 2022, and that Crimea will be retaken in 2023,” Episkopos said.
In fact, Hodges made a similar prediction just last week, tellingThe Sun that Ukraine was once again working to isolate Crimea. “There will be a significant political problem for Putin when Crimea is finally back under Ukraine’s control,” Hodges said. “Things are moving in the right direction for Ukraine.”
The Western press has also downplayed the fact that many Ukrainians no longer want to fight.
“English-language reports about violent resistance to conscription [in Ukraine] are dwarfed by stories claiming Russia is faltering,” writer Branko Marcetic previously observed in RS. “Some Ukrainian-language reports about the country’s recruitment and demographic crises are simply never translated to English.”
Prolonging the war
But rosy coverage of Ukraine’s wartime prospects helps Western politicians make the case for more military aid, prolonging the conflict.
“The discourse around this war is saturated with the delusion that victory is right around the corner if the West simply does a little more,” Episkopos told RS. “As if one or two fresh aid tranches and sanctions packages will accomplish what $150 billion in military aid [to Ukraine] and the world’s most ambitious sanctions regime with over 25,000 restrictions [against Russia] could not,” he said, citing previous efforts to assist Ukraine.
“Most Western leaders… stand to lose politically from [abandoning the Ukrainian war effort],” he stressed. “Therefore, the only course left is to double down on the alternative information space they’ve created for themselves regardless of how far removed it is from the realities of this war.”
But observers say that doubling down, rather than pursuing diplomacy, has real costs for Ukrainians on the ground.
“By overstating Kyiv’s position, the Western media masks a grim reality: there is no viable military path to a Ukrainian victory,” Davis said. “Continuing to arrogantly pursue one anyway only prolongs the destruction and casualties pointlessly suffered by Kyiv.”
“Ukraine will either have to negotiate the best peace terms available or face complete military defeat,” Davis warned.
NIH knew its keyword filters were hiding one side of a public debate. Internal emails now reveal how its lawyers tried to keep the system working without making the censorship look unconstitutional.
Harry Harlow died in 1981. His maternal-deprivation experiments on rhesus macaques turn up in most undergraduate psychology courses, usually as the case study for why research ethics rules exist at all. Four decades after his death, his surname was one of the terms the National Institutes of Health typed into Facebook’s comment-filtering tool so that any comment containing it would vanish from public view.
Next to Harlow on the Facebook list: Suomi, for Stephen Suomi, who runs a comparative ethology lab at NIH’s child health institute. Then monkey, monkies, marmoset, hamster, mouse, mice, primate, chimpanzee, cats, gatos, animales, animalitos, cruel, cruelty, revolting, torment, torture, two monkey emojis, and an emoji with an expletive face. Until December 2021, the list also held PETA and PETALatino.
The Instagram list ran shorter and odder: animal, chimpanzee, monkey, experiment, hurt, kill, test, torture, stop.
Much of this has been public since 2024, when the D.C. Circuitheld the filters unconstitutional. What was missing was the agency’s own side of it: what NIH’s lawyers thought they were doing, and what they told the communications staff running the accounts.
Paul’s interest was COVID, and the COVID material is in there. What the emails document, in greater detail, is how an agency behaves in the days after its own attorney tells it, in writing, that it is discriminating against a viewpoint.
How the hiding works
Facebook and Instagram give page administrators an optional keyword filter. You paste in a list of words. Any comment containing one of them, past or future, is hidden automatically. On Facebook there is also a built-in profanity filter with strength settings; NIH had it on “strong.” Instagram has its own default offensive-word filter, which NIH had enabled as well.
“Hidden” has a technical meaning on these platforms that differs from what most people assume. A hidden comment survives. It remains fully visible to the person who wrote it and to that person’s friends. Everyone else scrolling the page sees nothing. The joint stipulation in the case spells out the consequence in flat language: the user whose comment has been hidden typically receives no notice.
So the speaker’s screen looks normal. They wrote a sentence; they can see the sentence, the sentence is there tomorrow. The rest of the page sees nothing, and no error message ever told them so. The silencing leaves no trace, so there is nothing to appeal and no accurate way to complain. Madeline Krasno, one of the plaintiffs and a former University of Wisconsin animal-lab employee, eventually worked out that she was being filtered and started deliberately misspelling words to get through.
What the lawyers told NIH
On December 1, 2021, an NIH senior attorney in the Office of the General Counsel wrote to the communications team after a call with DOJ. The email is the heart of the release.
She opened with a direct instruction. NIH should stop blocking PETA and PETALatino on Facebook and PETA on Instagram, immediately. That is agency counsel identifying terms as viewpoint-based; you cannot block the name of an organization and claim you are policing subject matter. The words stayed up until December 3. Three Instagram hashtag filters, #stopanimaltesting, #stoptesting, and #stoptestingonanimals, were still running afterward. The attorney later had to check from her own personal Instagram account to establish that they were still live.
For those hashtags she laid out four options. The first, which NIH took, was to remove them and use a different neutral keyword hashtag “to achieve the same effect” against the volume of PETA comments; she suggested #testing or #animals. The second was to keep the anti-testing hashtags and add a pro-testing one to offset them, and she offered an example: #keepanimaltesting. The third was to drop the filters if they were not doing much. The fourth was to keep them, on which DOJ’s advice was that a court might find the terms not viewpoint-neutral, and that the worst that could happen would be an order to stop using them.
The first option is a piece of legal engineering. Counsel has identified a constitutional defect in the selection of words. The remedy chosen is a different selection of words, picked to produce the same suppression while surviving review. The volume of hidden speech stays exactly the same. The category of hidden speech barely changes. What changes is the paper trail.
The evidence DOJ kept asking for
DOJ wanted to argue that NIH had no policy of targeting animal-rights speech, and that a comment defending animal testing would be hidden on the same terms as one attacking it. To make that argument stick, they needed examples. They asked at least three times, across several emails, for two or three instances of the filters catching a pro-testing comment.
NIH came up empty. The answer that came back was that this was not a scenario that happens, since people were not really posting in favor of animal testing. The closest they could offer was that a pro-research reply posted under an already-hidden comment would disappear along with it.
That is a serious problem for the neutrality argument. A filter can be even-handed in its text and one-sided in its operation because only one side of a debate uses the vocabulary. “Torture” and “cruelty” are loaded words in a fight about animal research. They are the other side’s words. The substitute hashtags counsel proposed work the same way: #testing and #animals catch the people who came to complain, and say nothing about them.
Wuhan, ivermectin, and the “neutral” filter
Pressed for examples of off-topic hiding that had nothing to do with animals, NIH’s comms staff supplied one. On a post about the agency’s initiative to end structural racism, comments about the Wuhan Institute of Virology and ivermectin had been hidden as off-topic.
At its narrowest that is defensible. Ivermectin has no bearing on a post about racial equity in the biomedical workforce, and a moderator who removes it is doing an ordinary job badly rather than doing a sinister job well.
However, the agency’s stated purpose for its accounts, according to its own documents, is to be the voice of factual information in a time of “misinformation,” and its internal list of disruptive comment examples is characterized as mostly COVID misinformation.
And the December email contains a line that should worry anyone regardless of where they land on lab-leak or ivermectin: if the court found NIH’s pages to be designated public forums, the attorney wrote, NIH might lose the ability to use neutral filters to shut down discussion of a broad topic. Her two examples: animal testing generally, and COVID vaccinations generally.
A neutral filter is a tool for removing a subject, not off-topic noise, and the subjects an agency wants gone are the subjects on which it is under attack.
What it costs the rest of us
Keyword filtering falls hardest on people without lawyers. PETA had the Knight First Amendment Institute and the Animal Legal Defense Fund and four years of litigation budget. A parent asking whether a mouse-model result applies to their child, on a post about a mouse-model result, had none of that and never learned the question was invisible.
Any political movement with a recognizable vocabulary can be filtered by list. Animal advocacy happens to be the test case because its lexicon is unusually easy to enumerate. Immigration, abortion, Gaza, vaccine injury, policing: all have signature words, and all can be removed from a government comment section by an administrator with fifteen minutes and no oversight. What is documented is this one list on these two accounts. Whether the rest of the federal government and the fifty states run filters like it is unknown; almost nobody has asked.
Krasno asked. She filed a Freedom of Information Act request with NIH on April 24, 2021, for the keyword blocklist on its social accounts, and had the records five days later. A circuit opinion, four years of litigation, and 128 pages of internal email descend from that request. For the years before it, the only people who knew which words were on the list were the ones who typed them in.
American journalist Lindsey Snell says the chargé d’affaires of Syria’s ruling Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham-led (HTS) administration in Washington participated in her abduction by the al-Nusra Front militants in northern Syria in 2016, claims that have drawn renewed attention to the background of officials serving in Syria’s diplomatic service.
Snell made the claim on Wednesday after posting archival footage on her X account of an interview she conducted with Mohamed Qanatari shortly before she was kidnapped in Syria in 2016.
According to Snell, Qantari was a member of the al-Nusra Front at the time and took part in her kidnapping before later serving in the foreign ministry of the HTS regime.
My interview with the Syrian chargé d'affaires to the US back when he was a member of Jabhat al-Nusra. pic.twitter.com/g0NSaH1WUp
In the video posted on X, Qanatari appears wearing a face covering in front of an al-Nusra Front flag while discussing the group’s objectives. Snell said that although he insisted on concealing his identity during the interview, she later identified him by his voice, eyes and manner of speech.
Snell, an American freelance journalist, was kidnapped in Syria in 2016 while reporting on the conflict. Snell escaped from the militant group’s grip after more than 2 weeks in captivity. She has maintained that Qanatri was directly involved in her detention by the armed group, which at the time operated as al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria.
In July 2016, the Nusra Front renamed itself to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.
Syrian authorities have not publicly responded to Snell’s claims.
The controversy comes as Syria has sought to expand diplomatic engagement with the United States following political changes in Damascus. Qanatri currently serves as chargé d’affaires at Syria’s embassy in Washington, representing the country’s interests in the absence of a formally accredited ambassador.
The allegations have also renewed debate over the vetting of officials appointed to diplomatic positions following the political transition in Syria, with critics questioning whether individuals linked to armed factions should be allowed to represent the country abroad.
Snell’s claims have resurfaced nearly a decade after her abduction, drawing renewed attention amid broader discussions over accountability for abuses committed during Syria’s prolonged conflict.
The American journalist said she plans to release a second installment of the video containing additional footage from her 2016 interview.
Two Israeli female soldiers died by suicide this week, bringing the number of serving Israeli soldiers who have taken their own lives since the start of the year to 16, amid growing concern over rising suicide rates in the military since the war in the Gaza Strip began.
Haaretz reported on Tuesday that a female soldier from the Bardelas Battalion, deployed along the Egypt-Israel border, died by suicide on Tuesday morning at a military base in southern Israel.
The newspaper said she was found injured at the base and taken to hospital, where she was later pronounced dead.
In a separate incident, Haaretz reported that a female soldier serving in Israeli military intelligence died by suicide on Sunday at the Glilot military base near Ramat Hasharon in central Israel. The report said she held a classified position.
According to Haaretz, the Israeli military has opened investigations through the Military Police into the circumstances surrounding both incidents.
Data compiled by the newspaper showed that the number of serving Israeli soldiers who have died by suicide since the beginning of this year has risen to 16.
The report added that at least nine other soldiers, including regular and reserve personnel who had taken part in the war, also took their own lives while off duty.
According to an earlier Haaretz report, 22 serving Israeli soldiers died by suicide in 2025, marking the highest annual figure recorded by the Israeli military in the past 15 years.
The words ‘killed’, ‘injured’, ‘maimed’, and the like often lose a great part of their meaning when they are repeated so relentlessly.
Take, for example, a headline like: “13 Palestinians Killed in Gaza, Others Wounded.” Though many of us can still feel a deep sense of sadness over such a tragedy, the news itself becomes less shocking over time.
According to figures produced by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, Israel has killed and wounded a total of over 250,000 Palestinians since the start of the genocide in 2023.
The tally is updated daily because the killing never stops.
On July 23, six Palestinians were killed in Gaza. A day earlier, 13 were killed, and the day before that, nine others were killed, and so on.
It is this “and so on” that makes us lose our sense, over time, of what these tragedies actually entail. These are innocent people who are burned alive in their tents, bombed in their cars, or killed while attempting to enjoy a brief moment of respite from the scorching heat on the beach.
Among the nine killed on July 21, an entire family, including four young children, was wiped out in a single strike. As reports of Israel’s daily harvest of Palestinian lives in Gaza multiply, journalists too often neglect to humanize those killed.
A photo circulating on social media showed three of those children: a boy wearing a T-shirt that read ‘Santa Monica Beach’; his bespectacled sister in a pink shirt, proudly holding a certificate of achievement from her school; and their youngest sister, posing gently.
These three represent every single Palestinian child killed since the start of this genocide. According to UN and international estimates, over 21,000 children have been killed in Gaza, with tens of thousands more maimed or buried under the rubble.
Though the daily routine of killing makes the tragedy feel less shocking for those merely hearing the numbers, it becomes infinitely more tragic for those who must bear it directly. In Gaza, not a single family has been spared the loss of loved ones, making the grief compound day after day.
There are no words to describe the collective pain of Gaza.
What makes the tragedy even more unbearable is that the entire world knows what has transpired and continues to transpire in Gaza, yet fails to do anything about it. We keep track of the numbers, we point to Israel’s barbarity, we decry the failure of international institutions, and we shake our heads in despair.
Yet the outcome remains unchanged: the death toll rises, and new statistics are generated daily to remind us of the magnitude of the crisis.
A July 23 joint report by the FAO, UNICEF, and the World Food Programme found that 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza face acute food insecurity.
The report also warned that more than 74,000 children under five are expected to require urgent treatment for acute malnutrition over the coming year.
This report was released on the same day that Gaza health authorities updated the official death toll to over 73,311 Palestinians. That number is already higher now, as more have been killed since.
On that same day, Thameen Al-Kheetan of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) stated that “no place in Gaza can be considered safe.”
That statement is true, of course, but it is also the most well-known fact in the world right now. No one is contesting it. And yet, no one acts: Israel keeps bombing, the US Congress continues assigning it more weapons, and the rest of the world tracks the death tally.
Meanwhile, Israel—which has seized control of even more territory in Gaza since the so-called ceasefire—is now constructing massive earth barriers stretching an estimated 23 kilometers across the Strip.
Though it was never fair to begin with, even the original Trump Gaza plan never mentioned the building of interior borders, the theft of additional land, or the concentration of displaced Palestinians into tiny enclaves within an already small piece of land.
Israel’s long-term plan is not only to maintain permanent military control over Gaza, as top Israeli officials have declared, but also to prolong its torment indefinitely.
Even as I write this article, news reports indicate that four more Palestinians have just been killed. It is unlikely the number will remain that low; the Israeli army rarely kills in small numbers.
But even these small numbers represent human beings whose grief cannot be measured in statistics, summed up in official statements, or reduced to clichéd headlines.
Nor do survivors cling to the empty promise of international law prevailing over US-backed impunity. History has made Palestinians cynical. For generations, through every massacre and land theft since the 1948 Nakba, waiting for justice has yielded nothing but hollow promises and rising body counts.
The only difference between the past and the present is that today, we all know, see, and hear exactly what is happening in Gaza and across Palestine.
The very least we can do is refuse to turn our backs or reduce the genocide before our eyes to numbers.
If we allow that to happen, we become culpable, too: Israel does the killing, using American arms, while we sit by, counting the dead and shaking our heads at the sad state of the world.
Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick Reveal How The Israel Lobby Paved The Way For A U.S. War On Iran
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | August 11, 2026
Investigative journalist Eli Clifton and political scientist Ian Lustick have released a detailed history of the Israel lobby’s influence on U.S. foreign policy titled “Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power”.
The book contains a detailed history of the Israel lobby’s influence over various U.S. administrations going back to its creation.
Among the book’s most interesting revelations is how the Israel Lobby pushed anti-Iran propaganda in the United States in order to destroy U.S. diplomacy with Iran. … continue
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