Col Douglas Macgregor: Pressure to REMOVE TRUMP FROM OFFICE Growing
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – June 23, 2026
Starmer’s exit exposes dirty secret: UK can’t afford Ukraine War
By Ian Proud | Responsible Statecraft | June 24, 2026
Sir Keir Starmer bowed to the inevitable Monday and resigned from leadership of the Labour Party and, therefore, from his role as prime minister.
The resignation had been brewing for some time. While Starmer led the Labour Party to an astounding landslide election victory in July 2024, by September 2025, he was already being labeled the most unpopular prime minister since polling began; this followed a series of U-turns and poorly handled crises. After heavy losses of council seats in local elections in May, the Labour Party moved quickly to remove him.
Former Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is expected to become prime minister after an internal Labour Party leadership contest. (Labour maintains a majority in parliament, so it maintains the right to form a government.) Burnham will quickly find that he doesn’t have the money to fix public services, double defense spending, and continue to fund an unwinnable war in Ukraine. He also faces an almighty struggle to convince his party that aligning with the Trump administration on peace in Europe is the right approach, both politically and fiscally.
Up until June 17, Burnham wasn’t a member of parliament. But after a sitting MP gave up their seat, he won the ensuing bi-election by a landslide. A cabinet minister under Tony Blair, he is by far the most popular Labour politician and the person viewed as most able to take on the surging right-wing Reform party. Having been out of frontline British politics for nine years in Manchester, Burnham has built up a reputation as someone who gets things done and is relatable, qualities Starmer appeared to lack.
To outfox Reform, Burnham will have to reinstall public confidence that the government is improving the lives of ordinary Britons in the face of an ongoing immigration surge, a cost of living crisis and a knife crime epidemic, typified by the at times violent street protests that followed the killing of Henry Nowak.
His biggest challenge? Finding the money to deliver real change with anemic growth and the national debt at 94% of GDP.
An obvious place to look would be the blank check approach Britain – under both Conservative and Labour governments – has taken to supporting the proxy war in Ukraine, which has so far cost $29 billion (£21.8 billion).
That might not sound like a huge proportion of government spending. But Starmer’s government faced stiff resistance and had to back away from making a much smaller cut of £5 billion to welfare spending. When your budget is so tight that you have to look at cutting winter fuel payments to the elderly, then it becomes harder to justify funnelling billions towards a distant war.
Aligning with the Trump administration to press for a peace settlement would be the rational and realist thing to do. But there’s a catch. The Labour Party and Burnham himself dislike Donald Trump. In 2025, for example, the putative prime minister accused Trump of “bringing instability to the world.”
Starmer had a troubled relationship with Trump throughout his mandate. The night before Starmer’s resignation, Trump had posted on Truth Social that Starmer was leaving after “failing badly on immigration and energy.” That was hopefully the last on a long list of snipes by the U.S. President. But Burnham will struggle to change the script in an anti-Trump Labour Party. Starmer’s cabinet was littered with ministers who had criticized Trump over the years, including one who called him an “odious, sad, little man.”
Further complicating relations was Starmer’s appointment of Lord Peter Mandelson as Britain’s Ambassador to Washington, which proved to be a catastrophic mistake after further revelations about the depths of his association with Jeffrey Epstein came to light.
To his credit, Starmer invested some effort into papering over the cracks. The visit of His Majesty the King to Washington in May offered a rare bright spot, focusing on the strong ties that bind the United States and the United Kingdom.
However, the flip-flopping of U.K. support for the U.S. war against Iran cast a shadow across the relationship. And it was on Ukraine policy where Starmer was most at odds with the U.S. President.
While Trump was and is able to surface some uncomfortable truths about the state of Ukraine — i.e. that it cannot win a war against Russia — Starmer remained a true believer in eventual victory.
Where Trump has met President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and spoken to him several times, Keir Starmer didn’t speak to the Russian President once during his two years in office.
Where Trump tried to orchestrate the skeleton of a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, Starmer rejected its key aspect, on the complex issue of territorial concessions, out of hand.
The list is long and not distinguished. Starmer made himself one of the biggest obstacles to Trump’s aspirations to bring the war in Ukraine to a close, aligning himself with the Europeans who hold to the same view.
And yet Burnham will quickly find that something’s got to give. He can’t fix decrepit public services in Britain, double defense spending, and continue to support an unwinnable war in Ukraine. The math will never add up.
He should be aware that Reform Party leader Nigel Farage is close to Trump and spends most of his time talking about domestic policy challenges, which is clearly resonating with ordinary voters.
For much of my diplomatic career, my European counterparts regularly sniped about the depth of the United Kingdom’s relationship with the United States, and how this eroded European solidarity. Yet, right now, the British and the American position on the Ukraine war could not be further apart.
With Britain having left the European Union, Burnham will arrive in power with a brief window of opportunity to realign with America in the interests of European peace. The tides of British domestic politics suggest that this may help him to rebuild Labour popularity against an onrushing Farage while also delivering much needed savings. I doubt, however, that the Labour party will like this idea at all. Burnham’s honeymoon period may prove to be as truncated as his rise to power.
Ian Proud was a member of His Britannic Majesty’s Diplomatic Service from 1999 to 2023. He served as the Economic Counsellor at the British Embassy in Moscow from July 2014 to February 2019. He recently published his memoir, “A Misfit in Moscow: How British diplomacy in Russia failed, 2014-2019,” and is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute.
BEN-GVIR: “ALL OF LEBANON MUST BURN” — w/ Mouin Rabbani
Mario Nawfal | June 23, 2026
Europe/US/Ukraine Barreling To War w/Russia
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – June 23, 2026
Is there a future for the U.S. strategy in the Arctic?
By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 23, 2026
The Arctic has been one of the main critical points of Donald Trump’s strategy since his rise to power. The increase in American presence (military and civilian) in the region is part of Trump’s broader strategy to “control the Western Hemisphere.” The main challenge for the U.S. is to try to overcome Russia’s long-standing presence in the region – as well as China’s growing presence. Many analysts doubt the American capacity to neutralize the advance of its geopolitical rivals in Arctic technology.
Recently, the U.S. has made Arctic affairs a strategic priority in its foreign and defense policy. Several of Trump’s supposedly “irrational” actions (such as his obsessive pursuit of annexing Greenland) are based on a relentless effort to expand American influence in the Arctic region. This is consistent with Trump’s hemispheric strategy, which can be summarized as reducing U.S. global presence (tacitly accepting a multipolar reality), while compensating for this retreat by strengthening positions in the western half of the world.
Obviously, several recent events have undermined Trump’s original hemispheric strategy. His illegitimate and anti-strategic decision to go to war in the Middle East, for example, was one of the greatest violations of MAGA principles in foreign and defense policy. On the other hand, a substantial part of the original strategy persists, as can be seen, for example, in interventions in Latin America (Venezuela, Cuba) and in the Arctic. Trump seeks to consolidate an exclusive American sphere of influence in the western half of the planet, and a large Arctic portion clearly “belongs” to that half.
Among the main U.S. measures to expand its presence in the Arctic is the increase in military activity. Washington sees deterrence capability as a central element in its containment strategy of the “Russian-Chinese presence” in the region, which is why there has been a gradual escalation of NATO military activity in the Arctic. In recent times, specialized joint military exercises have been carried out by NATO countries in Arctic zones, making this one of the most important topics on the alliance’s strategic agenda.
In this context, the Pentagon has sought to align its initiatives with NATO’s operational axis in the High North, prioritizing a logic of joint exercises at high latitudes that emphasize full interoperability between land, naval, and air forces. This approach is not limited to climate training, but reflects an attempt to establish a permanent standard of joint readiness in polar environments, where the degradation of sensors, communications, and logistics requires continuous multinational coordination. In practical terms, this translates into more frequent cycles of combined Arctic and sub-Arctic exercises, integrating U.S. and allied commands under unified planning and response structures.
At the same time, there is a projected increase in the U.S. and NATO military presence in the region, with significant forces deployed in regular rotations and a strengthened naval presence in the North Atlantic and adjacent seas. This includes recurring transits of allied naval groups, the maintenance of a continuous presence of nuclear submarines in strategic patrol areas, and the intensification of strategic bomber operations along routes crossing the High North as a form of deterrence signaling. Together, these measures aim to create a permanent layer of military pressure and surveillance, raising the cost of any alleged attempt by Russia or China to challenge the region.
However, there is a clear problem in this entire scenario that the U.S. seems not yet to have realized: Russia’s status quo in the Arctic is quite secure. The country has, over decades, developed all kinds of appropriate technologies specifically designed for the polar environment. For obvious reasons of survival in the northern part of its own territory, Russia has historically been forced to become a major Arctic power, with a vast fleet of icebreakers and an entire specialized industrial sector dedicated to science and technology specifically for the Arctic. For Russia, this has never been a matter of extravagance or expansionism, but of survival in its own strategic environment.
More recently, China, which is not an Arctic country, has begun expanding its presence in the region through cooperation with Russia. As Russian-Chinese integration advances within the framework of the unlimited strategic partnership, with both countries engaging in various forms of political and economic cooperation, it is natural that their converging interests in Arctic affairs facilitate Beijing’s participation in the region. The Chinese do not have a military strategy for the Arctic, focusing instead on logistics, economics, and science, but even this concerns the West.
Indeed, Western countries, especially the U.S., are in an endless race. They aim to surpass decades of Russian presence in the Arctic in just a few years. The West does not even possess a specialized Arctic technical-industrial sector like Russia, and is far behind in capabilities such as navigation (especially icebreakers), geolocation, infrastructure construction, and overall operational capacity in the Arctic. It is worth questioning how long it will take for the West to even approach Russia’s level of Arctic technology – let alone surpass it -, especially at a time of deep Russian-Chinese integration, in which Moscow can rely on China’s industrial heartland as a partner to further strengthen its Arctic sector.
In the end, the American strategy seems destined to fail. The U.S. inherited much of its geopolitical thinking from the British, and this appears to have come at a high cost. Classical geopolitical theorists historically ignored the Arctic, since the region was seen as inhospitable and impossible to explore, focusing instead on well-known strategies of containing Eurasia – which became an American specialty. Now, however, the Arctic is accessible to humans thanks to modern technology, but the U.S. does not have a geopolitical strategy for this new reality.
Perhaps the best path for Trump would be to reduce his hemispheric ambitions, acknowledging that control of the Arctic is no longer among the achievable goals for the United States. It is important to remember that this obsession with Arctic conquest was inherited and deepened, but not created by Trump. Even before he took office, Democrats had already launched an expansionist military strategy in the region during the Biden administration, under the 2024 Arctic Strategy. So, if Trump truly wants to reverse the harmful legacy of his predecessor, revising Arctic policy could be a good initial step.
Report highlights US munitions crisis: Missiles cannot be replenished quickly even with al the money in the world
Al-Manar | June 22, 2026
The supply chain constraints affecting US missile production are structural in nature; they cannot be solved merely by throwing money at them, The National Interest website introduced its article written by by Harrison Kass and titled “Why Can’t America Make More Interceptor Missiles?”.
The article maintained that one of the sharpest conflicts stemming from America’s wars in the Middle East is the rapid depletion of its anti-air interceptor missile inventory, adding that months of operations in the Middle East during the Trump administration—first Operation Rough Rider against the Houthis in Yemen, then the far more expansive Operation Epic Fury against Iran, alongside consistent support for Israeli air defenses in the post-October 7 period—have consumed advanced interceptor missiles at a pace far faster than America’s existing defense industrial base can replace them.
The article warned, “Although most Americans do not worry about missile production rates, the problem is non-trivial. In fact, it is serious enough that the United States’ depleted missile inventories are now influencing broader strategic planning and force-posture decisions, particularly in Asia.”
“So why can’t the US just build more of these systems? The primary constraint is not money, but industrial capacity; a handful of inputs are difficult to ramp up production for, creating bottlenecks for the rest of the missile supply chain.
- Solid Rocket Motors: In spite of their differing designs, nearly every advanced interceptor missile depends on the same highly consolidated rocket-motor section, which is difficult to build and requires human expertise.
- Skilled Labor: Production of many missile components requires specialized technicians who need years of training in order to complete their jobs. Nor is expertise the only constraint; many technicians in sensitive jobs must complete thorough security vetting to ensure they will not share production secrets with US adversaries, taxing the limited resources of government investigators.
- Precision Tooling: Many components depend in turn on advanced machines, which are costly to build and subject to their own supply chain constraints. Though production of these is ramping up, many take time and cannot simply expand overnight.”
Recent defense budgets have dramatically increased procurement funding. Funding for SM missiles jumped from $1.26 billion to $8.5 billion from Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) to FY27. The goal is to rebuild inventories while expanding future production capacity, the article noted.
“Unfortunately, missiles cannot be replenished quickly. Even with all the money in the world, the SM-6 won’t be restored to pre-2025 magazine depth until 2028 or 2029; the PAC-3 until mid-2029; the THAAD until late 2029; the Tomahawk, a cruise missile also used extensively in Iran, around 2030. Many advanced interceptors require roughly two years from component production to final delivery.”
“The strategic consequences of this lag are significant. The Pentagon’s plans for the Pacific rely heavily on SM-6 interceptors, Patriots, and THAAD systems. These weapons would be absolutely critical in a conflict involving China. Every interceptor fired in the Middle East means one interceptor unavailable for the Pacific. So using multi-million-dollar interceptors to defeat cheap drones in the Middle East is a strategic loss,” the article concluded.
Strategic Oil Reserve Nears Collapse… US Must Choose: Guns or Butter
By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | June 21, 2026
As of the week ending June 12, 2026, the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) held approximately 340.25 million barrels of crude oil… Sounds like a lot, but it is approaching the danger zone. In late May, that number was 372 million barrels, which consisted of Sweet crude: ~142 MMB | Sour crude: ~230 MMB, according to the US Department of Energy.
The oil is stored in caverns at four sites:
- Bryan Mound: ~166 MMB
- Big Hill: ~90 MMB
- West Hackberry: ~72 MMB
- Bayou Choctaw: ~44 MMB
To understand how perilous the situation is you need to know that if the oil level in these caverns falls below a certain level that the structural integrity of the caverns would be jeopardized. The most commonly cited operational floor is around 20% of capacity. Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, told CNN that the SPR must be at least 20% full to remain operational — that’s roughly 143 million barrels against the SPR’s ~727 million barrel design capacity.
So subtract 143 barrels from 340.25… That means the US only has 197.25 million barrels left before the caverns could face irreparable damage. If the US consumers, who use 20 million barrels a day, had to rely exclusively on the SPR, the US only has less than a 9-day supply of reserves. If you compare the amount reported at the end of May (i.e., 372 MMb) with the June 15th report, the US is drawing 16 million barrels a week from the reserve. This is the optimistic scenario, i.e., the US has roughly a 12-day supply before the proverbial shit hits the fan.
But wait, it gets worse. The US Military has blown through its jet fuel reserves. The problem is compounded becuase Diesel reserves are at 25 year low. Diesel and Jet Fuel are critical Distillates. So the Trump administration must make a choice: support the military jets with jet fuel, or support the trucking Fleet with enough diesel fuel, to provide food and products to US consumers. Trump can’t wage war and keep the economy going at the current rate because diesel and jet fuel compete with each other when comes to production. So the question is, do you want to wage war or do you wanna save the economy and keep the trucks moving on the road? This is the main reason Trump signed the MoU with Iran.
A friend who is an energy analyst summarized the dilemma as follows:
The strategic warning is that the United States cannot assume it can fight a major fuel-intensive conflict and protect the domestic economy without tradeoffs. Military jet fuel, commercial aviation fuel, diesel, heating oil, and marine fuel all draw from the middle distillate portion of the refined barrel. Refineries can bias output, but they cannot instantly maximize every middle-distillate product at once.
The risk is not that every truck or aircraft stops at once. The risk is that a forced fuel-priority decision creates cascading shortages and price shocks across logistics, aviation, agriculture, construction, and consumer supply chains. A war-time jet-fuel surge could reduce the diesel cushion; a civil-aviation diversion could disrupt passenger movement and air cargo. Either channel can become recessionary because both diesel and jet fuel are operating fuels for the real economy.
The US is not the only country or region facing a massive problem. Europe is screwed. An April 2026 report by Karl Miller — The Iran War, the Strait of Hormuz and Europe’s Compound Energy Trap — spells out the danger facing Europe. Here is the Executive Summary:
This report assesses whether the European Union faces a structural energy-security Prisoner’s Dilemma with Russia, with Germany at its centre and the Persian Gulf crisis as the accelerant. The argument is blunt: the Union has deprived itself of the low-cost Russian oil and gas system that underpinned much of its industrial base, while the Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz disruption have simultaneously impaired the maritime energy system that supplies a decisive share of the world’s oil, refined products and LNG.
Europe is on its knees in strategic terms. It is not literally without emergency stocks, because EU and IEA rules require minimum oil inventories. The harder reality is more damaging: those inventories are finite, unevenly usable, commercially fragile and unable to replace the normal flow of crude, diesel, jet fuel, LPG, naphtha and LNG through global markets. Emergency stocks buy time; they do not restore cheap Russian pipeline gas, reopen Hormuz, rebuild refining flexibility or prevent member states from bidding against one another.
The EU therefore faces a compound trap. Russian gas is being removed by law, Persian Gulf flows are exposed to war, U.S. LNG has become indispensable but expensive, storage refill is costly, and Germany’s industrial model remains dependent on affordable dispatchable energy. Each member state can rationally protect itself through bilateral contracts, subsidies, exemptions and emergency procurement, yet those same choices weaken the Union’s collective bargaining power and deepen fragmentation.
The conclusion is that the EU is locked into a repeated, asymmetric collective-action game. Escaping it requires enforceable solidarity, shared critical-fuels planning, coordinated storage, firm-capacity realism, a diversified LNG portfolio, strategic petroleum-product management, and legal reforms that make cooperation faster and more profitable than national defection.
UK to send Ukraine 150,000 drones
RT | June 19, 2026
The UK will provide Ukraine with 150,000 UAVs by the end of the year, London announced on Thursday following one of Kiev’s largest drone attacks on Moscow since the start of the conflict.
The package, worth £752 million ($996 million), was announced by British Defense Secretary Dan Jarvis at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels. According to the British government, which has been among Kiev’s most active military supporters, the package will be funded through London’s £2.26 billion loan to Kiev, backed by proceeds from frozen Russian sovereign assets.
British officials presented the package, which includes drones, missiles and radars, as necessary military support for Kiev. Chancellor Rachel Reeves pledged that London would continue backing Ukraine and putting pressure on Moscow. Russia has long argued that continued Western arms deliveries only prolong the conflict and undermine peace efforts.
The announcement came after Moscow and the surrounding region were hit by one of the largest Ukrainian drone raids in recent years. Russian air defenses intercepted 194 drones approaching the capital overnight, according to officials, but the attack still caused damage.
Local authorities reported that one drone struck the Moscow Oil Refinery in the Kapotnya district, triggering a fire, while debris damaged residential buildings, vehicles, and commercial sites, including several shopping centers.
Residents in several districts also reported black rain and soot falling from the sky after the refinery blaze, with local authorities advising people to keep windows closed and limit time outdoors.
At least 17 civilians, including two children, were reported injured in the Moscow Region. The raid also disrupted air traffic, with temporary restrictions imposed at Moscow’s airports and numerous flights delayed or canceled.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov condemned the attacks and said Moscow would respond by changing its strategy and begin regularly carrying out large-scale strikes against targets that “directly affect the combat capability” of the Ukrainian military.
“I have long been convinced that words are not enough,” Lavrov told reporters.
Moscow has repeatedly accused Ukraine of using Western-supplied weapons, funding and intelligence to carry out “terrorist attacks” on Russian territory and civilian infrastructure.
Russian officials have argued that continued arms deliveries from the UK, EU and NATO members make Western governments direct participants in the conflict and reduce the chances of a peace deal.
Switzerland confirms US-Iran talks planned for Friday are cancelled
Al Mayadeen | June 19, 2026
Talks that had been planned for Friday between the United States and Iran at the Burgenstock mountaintop resort in Switzerland will not take place, according to a Swiss foreign ministry statement.
The announcement came after a White House spokesperson said overnight that US Vice President JD Vance had pulled out of a planned trip to meet Iranian negotiators in Switzerland on Friday to begin talks to implement an agreement struck between Tehran and Washington to end the war.
Vance had been expected to travel to Geneva on Friday to begin technical negotiations on implementing the 14-point agreement reached between Tehran and Washington. However, a White House spokesperson said the visit was called off because arrangements for the talks had not been finalized.
A White House statement detailed that Vance and the US delegation were prepared to depart once arrangements had been finalized. “But the logistics of these negotiations have never been simple or predictable,” the statement added.
Iran seeks implementation before new negotiations
The Iranian negotiating delegation had earlier postponed its trip to Switzerland due to the ongoing Israeli aggression on southern Lebanon, an informed source told Al Mayadeen on Thursday.
According to the source, the delegation had already been preparing to depart Iran and launch the first round of negotiations, scheduled to span 60 days, before the decision to suspend the trip was made.
Tehran had previously informed both Washington and the mediators that the Lebanon file remains a central component of the negotiations and will directly influence whether the talks proceed, the source stated, citing Iranian warnings that continued Israeli aggression extending up to 10 kilometers deep inside Lebanese territory constitutes a clear violation of the first clause of the Memorandum of Understanding and the framework agreement.
What does the MoU include?
Iran revealed on Thursday the full text of the Memorandum of Understanding, which declares the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, with a final deal to be concluded within 60 days following continued talks.
The US agreed to remove its naval blockade within 30 days, end all sanctions on an agreed schedule, and issue waivers for Iranian oil exports and associated services.
The US also undertakes to release frozen Iranian funds and work with regional partners on a reconstruction plan worth at least $300 billion for Iran.
Iran reaffirmed it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons, with stockpiled enriched material to be resolved via a mutually agreed mechanism under IAEA supervision, while enrichment and other nuclear issues were expected to be discussed in final negotiations.
Israeli aggression continues against Lebanon despite MoU
Despite the agreement, the Israeli occupation has continued its aggression against southern Lebanon, while Hezbollah resistance fighters continue to engage Israeli forces in the town of Kfar Tibnit.
Today at dawn, Israeli bombing on residential areas in southern Lebanon killed and wounded civilians, with casualties reported across several villages in the Nabatieh district.
According to preliminary reports, Israeli airstrikes targeted inhabited homes in the towns of Harouf, Kfar Sir, and al-Sharqiyeh, resulting in several martyrs, injuries, and several missing persons trapped beneath the rubble.
In a separate attack, two civilians were martyred and two others wounded after an Israeli strike targeted the southern town of Qatrani.
The latest attacks come as Israeli occupation forces continue targeting civilians, medical crews, and residential areas across southern Lebanon despite the ceasefire agreement and ongoing diplomatic efforts aimed at ending hostilities on all fronts.
Resistance confronts Israeli advance toward Kfar Tibnit
For its part, the Lebanese Resistance confronted an attempted advance by Israeli occupation forces toward the town of Kfar Tibnit overnight Thursday.
Resistance fighters targeted Israeli military vehicles attempting to move toward the town using anti-tank guided missiles and previously prepared ambushes. Several Israeli vehicles were struck during the confrontation, with flames seen rising from some of the targeted vehicles on the outskirts of Kfar Tibnit.
The Resistance affirmed that the Kfar Tibnit–Ali al-Taher area would remain impervious to Israeli incursions and vowed to continue defending Lebanon and its people.
Strategic Ambiguity (If We Must)
By Joseph Solis-Mullen | The Libertarian Institute | June 18, 2026
In recent years, critics on both sides of the aisle have taken aim at the longstanding policy of strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan. They argue that Washington should abandon ambiguity and embrace “strategic clarity,” explicitly pledging to fight China over Taiwan. Others, such as Hoover Institute Fellow Eyck Freymann, have offered more sophisticated sounding alternatives like “structured ambiguity,” attempting to codify precisely what America would and would not do in various contingencies, particularly involving gray zone activities.
But abandoning a long-established policy that, whatever its faults, has prevented a major war between great powers for over half a century, in favor of a new policy, would be a serious mistake.
To understand why, let’s start with strategic ambiguity. Its origins lay in Richard Nixon’s opening to China. Years of increasing Sino-Soviet tensions opened the door to this diplomatic revolution of the early 1970s. With Washington and Beijing both seeing value in balancing against Moscow, efforts at normalizing diplomatic relations between the two began in earnest.
Taiwan was the major sticking point.
The resulting framework for normalization, the only one possible, was a carefully constructed kicking of the can down the road. In the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, the United States acknowledged that Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait maintained there was but one China and that Taiwan was part of China. Importantly, Washington did not itself endorse Beijing’s sovereignty claim. Instead, it merely acknowledged the Chinese position.
This balancing act became even more delicate in 1979 when the Jimmy Carter administration formally completed the recognition of the People’s Republic of China while severing official diplomatic relations with Taipei. Congress, in response, passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which established an unofficial relationship with the island and authorized the sale of defensive arms.
With the prior mutual defense treaty of 1954 now gone, a new policy evolved: strategic ambiguity.
The genius, if one can use the term, of strategic ambiguity was that it created uncertainty for everyone involved.
Beijing could not know with certainty whether an invasion of Taiwan would provoke American military intervention. Taipei could not know with certainty that Washington would ride to its rescue if it formally declared independence. Both sides therefore had incentives to avoid unilateral changes to the status quo.
The arrangement was intentionally awkward. It was also remarkably successful.
For decades, the Taiwan Strait remained relatively stable. Taiwan developed into a prosperous democracy. China experienced its meteoric economic rise. The United States maintained productive, if often contentious, relations with both. Trade flourished across the strait even as political disagreements persisted.
The policy’s success rested on a simple but often overlooked reality: ambiguity restrained both Beijing and Taipei.
Today, however, a growing chorus in Washington insists that ambiguity itself invites aggression. Drawing heavily on analogies to the war in Ukraine, advocates of strategic clarity argue that the United States should make an explicit commitment to Taiwan’s defense.
The theory is straightforward. If Beijing knows with absolute certainty that America will intervene, deterrence will be strengthened.
The problem is that deterrence is a two-way street.
An explicit American security guarantee could just as easily embolden Taiwanese politicians inclined toward formal independence, believing that the United States had effectively removed the military risks associated with such a declaration. From Beijing’s perspective, strategic clarity might appear less like deterrence than a gradual abandonment of the understandings that have governed Sino-American relations since the 1970s, crossing a clearly delineated “red line” and provoking the very conflict it purported to prevent.
A somewhat more cautious proposal is “structured ambiguity,” which seeks to clarify certain commitments while preserving flexibility elsewhere. Specifically, its advocates hope to eliminate misunderstandings by clearly outlining what actions would precipitate what responses, including gray zone activities, while avoiding the rigidity of strategic clarity vis a vis U.S. military intervention in the event of an unprovoked invasion from the mainland.
But one suspects that this is merely ambiguity with additional paperwork, and a landscape filled with potential tripwires and chances for uncontrollable escalation.
For one of the central problems of diplomacy is that it is to a great extent a contest of perceptions. The more policymakers attempt to specify precisely where every line is drawn, the more opportunities arise for those lines to be tested.
A more restrained foreign policy would seek to reduce the risk of entanglement rather than refine the conditions under which American forces might eventually be committed to war.
Of course, from the non-interventionist perspective the entire debate is misguided. The United States has no treaty obligation to defend Taiwan—and needs none. American taxpayers have little interest in another potentially catastrophic conflict halfway around the globe; the American and world economy has everything to lose from such a confrontation; and there is little reason to think Washington would “win” such a conflict 90 miles from China’s coast in any event.
Unfortunately, that option receives little consideration in establishment circles. The debate instead centers on how Washington can more effectively manage a rivalry with Beijing while maintaining its existing commitments.
If those are the available choices, prudence suggests preserving the arrangement that has kept the peace.
Strategic ambiguity is imperfect. It frustrates politicians, pundits, and think tank analysts precisely because it lacks the satisfying certainty of a formal guarantee. But diplomacy is often successful because it leaves room for uncertainty. Not every problem requires a definitive answer. As my undergraduate professor used to say, paraphrasing Bismarck: diplomacy is the art of the possible.
The greatest danger to peace in the Taiwan Strait at this point may not be ambiguity itself but the temptation in Washington to move beyond it. History is filled with policymakers who believed they could engineer a more stable international order through greater precision and firmer commitments.
History is also filled with the unintended consequences of those efforts.
Finland shreds nuclear weapons ban
RT | June 18, 2026
Finland has lifted a long-standing ban on nuclear weapons, allowing them to be transported through or held on its territory. The Finnish parliament claims the move will “strengthen the security” of the country, but opponents say it makes Finland “a target for nuclear strikes.”
Finland’s parliament voted on Wednesday to amend the country’s Nuclear Energy Act and Criminal Code to allow the import, transit, supply, and storage of nuclear weapons on its soil. The measure passed by 125 votes to 61.
Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen celebrated the result, declaring on social media that “this historic reform strengthens the security of Finland and of NATO as a whole.”
The removal of the ban comes three years after Helsinki renounced its decades-long policy of military neutrality and joined NATO. Finland’s accession into the US-led military bloc cratered its relations with Russia, with which it shares a 1,340 km border.
Earlier this year, Moscow cautioned Helsinki against repealing the nuclear ban, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov telling reporters that it could “lead to an escalation of tensions on the European continent.” He added that “by deploying nuclear weapons on its territory, Finland is beginning to threaten us. And if Finland threatens us, we take appropriate measures.”
Finnish President Alexander Stubb, a Russia hawk whose government has encouraged Kiev’s use of Finnish arms “against military targets also on Russian soil,” insists that he has no plans to permanently host nuclear weapons.
However, Finland is interested in participating in a French scheme that would potentially see French fighter jets armed with nuclear weapons stationed at its airbases, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said earlier this month. France has around 290 nuclear warheads, and President Emmanuel Macron has said he intends to increase that number, and position them at airbases in friendly countries, in a strategy of “advanced nuclear deterrence” against Russia.
In Helsinki, European Parliament candidate Armando Mema described the lifting of the ban as “a big historical mistake for Finland.”
“This is a highly regrettable decision that undermines the security of Finland,” he wrote on X, adding that it “is not going to make Finland safer, [it] is going to make Finland a target for nuclear strikes. Russia’s posture is going to change drastically after this irresponsible decision.”
Censored Lavrov article Politico refused to publish (FULL TEXT)
RT | June 18, 2026
The pro-establishment, Brussels-based publication Politico Europe, owned by Germany’s Axel Springer SE, has refused to publish an exclusive article written by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Lavrov’s article was initially planned for publication in the Brussels-based Politico Europe, but due to a “last-minute decision by the outlet’s editorial team,” the publication was canceled, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
In the article, Russia’s highly experienced top diplomat outlined Moscow’s view of the Ukrainian conflict, Europe’s role in escalating the crisis, and the broader implications for global security. Lavrov accused European leaders of using diplomacy as a cover for NATO and EU expansion, while arguing that the West has sought to turn Ukraine into an anti-Russian foothold. He also warned that the EU’s growing militarization, including discussions about nuclear deterrence and “strategic autonomy,” could increase the risk of a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.
Below is the full text of Lavrov’s article, as published on the Russian Foreign Ministry website:
Some reflections on resolving the Ukrainian crisis, Europe and global security
At a meeting in London on 7 June 2026, the leaders of Britain, France, and Germany, as well as Vladimir Zelensky, laid out five preconditions for Russia to secure a “just and lasting peace” in Ukraine. United Europe now presents this list of demands as the basis for dialogue with Moscow.
Background
More than two decades of negotiations with Europe, as part of the collective West, lead to only one conclusion: engaging Russia in dialogue has served as a diplomatic smokescreen for the geopolitical expansion of Western institutions, above all NATO and the European Union, eastwards, right up to Russia’s borders.
Europe’s complicity in fueling the Ukrainian crisis is undeniable. Together with the United States, European countries orchestrated the Orange Revolution in Kiev in 2004. To create an anti-Russian bridgehead in Ukraine, they spent years buying off politicians and entire parties, rewriting history and educational curricula, cultivating and nurturing Ukrainian nationalism, and going to great lengths to pull Ukraine away from Russia.
In 2013, the European Union outright rejected our proposal for a compromise on the association agreement – a deal Brussels had long been pressing Viktor Yanukovich to sign. It is worth recalling that Ukraine was offered unilateral market opening without reciprocal commitments – terms that would have proved incompatible with Kiev’s continued membership in the CIS free-trade zone. When Viktor Yanukovich requested a deferral, the Europeans incited street riots that swiftly escalated into a coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014.
Germany, France, and Poland then proved themselves to be equally treacherous. Having guaranteed that the agreement reached between the opposition and Viktor Yanukovich would be honored, they washed their hands of it the moment that same opposition, their own handiwork, took power. “Democracy,” they shrugged, “takes unexpected turns.”
Europe thereafter lent its backing to the new authorities. In Odessa on 2 May 2014, the burning alive of dozens of innocent supporters of closer ties with Russia did not draw a single word of condemnation from European capitals.
As co-guarantors of the 2015 Minsk Agreements, France and Germany effectively encouraged the Ukrainian regime to sabotage its own commitments. As Angela Merkel and François Hollande later conceded – after the special military operation had already begun – Kiev’s implementation of the Minsk Agreements, unanimously approved by the UN Security Council, was never genuinely intended. The objective, they admitted, was merely to buy time: to shore up the Armed Forces of Ukraine and flood them with Western weaponry.
Russia, for its part, explored every diplomatic avenue to defuse Europe’s security crisis. However, in January 2022, the United States and NATO rejected Russia’s proposal for legally binding mutual security guarantees. European NATO members actively endorsed that rebuff.
Following the launch of the special military operation, United Europe threw its support behind the British prime minister’s efforts to sabotage the Istanbul negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Boris Johnson’s appeal to Kiev – “don’t sign anything, just fight” – slammed the door on genuine diplomacy for the foreseeable future.
Current situation
So what has prompted European leaders to suddenly shift their rhetoric and start talking about negotiations, and what are they aiming to achieve with these statements? For instance, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has stated that the purpose of any dialogue with Russia is to dictate Europe’s terms. These include paying “reparations” to Ukraine; withdrawing troops from Transnistria and the South Caucasus; abolishing the “foreign agents” law; and accepting strict limits on the size of the Russian Federation’s Armed Forces. In her framing, “there can be no just and lasting peace without accountability for Russia.” During the UN Security Council session on 19 May 2026, an EU representative made the point unequivocally: “Supporting Ukraine militarily does not contradict the pursuit of peace, but rather serves as a fundamental prerequisite for any credible, good-faith negotiations.”
Europe’s plan is to talk with Russia while simultaneously pressing ahead with a campaign of legal warfare orchestrated through the Council of Europe. Within this once-respected organization, an entire infrastructure is being assembled for the express purpose of “holding Russia accountable”: a Register of Damage, a Claims Commission, and a Special Tribunal.
The European Union has also given the green light to detaining merchant vessels on the high seas. Several incidents have already taken place in the Baltic and the Atlantic. At the same time, the West studiously averts its gaze from the terrorist acts of sabotage perpetrated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Black and Mediterranean Seas.
The real objective of Europe’s leaders, then, is not to negotiate with Russia. It is to shore up the Zelensky regime and preserve it as a launchpad for continued confrontation against Russia. With this in mind, European leaders are scrambling to secure a ceasefire as quickly as possible and for one reason only: to prevent the collapse of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the battlefield. The plan is to “freeze” the conflict without addressing its root causes, and then rapidly deploy military contingents from the Anglo-French “coalition of the willing” onto Ukrainian soil.
It is widely known that European elites have invested their “political capital” in the confrontation with Russia, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into propping up the Kiev regime and ramping up the military budgets of EU member states and NATO. Europe now aims to achieve “defense readiness” against Russia by 2030. Until then, they mean to buy time by whatever means are available. In a strikingly candid remark this April, Belgium’s chief of staff put it bluntly: “We still have a few years. Thanks to the courage and blood of the Ukrainians, who are buying us that time.”
United Europe continues to dream of expansion. It intends to absorb Ukraine and Moldova while pulling Armenia into its sphere of influence. NATO has already expanded eastward, swallowing up Finland and Sweden. As for Ukraine, it is increasingly being eyed as the “striking fist” of a future European military force, independent of the United States and independent of NATO.
Risks to global security
This state of affairs poses serious threats to global security. A direct confrontation between NATO and Russia could rapidly escalate into an exchange of nuclear strikes, with catastrophic consequences.
Under the banner of “strategic autonomy,” Europe is witnessing a significant build-up of its military capabilities, including in the nuclear sphere. Paris’s intention to extend its “nuclear umbrella” to several EU and NATO member states is a source of deep concern. This will do nothing to strengthen the security of France itself or of the recipients of its so-called protection.
For all that, Europe’s political and military establishment continues to attribute aggressive plans to Russia – plans that, they claim, reach far beyond Ukraine. The Russian president has stated on numerous occasions that all of this is nonsense, provocation, and disinformation, aimed solely at extracting budget funds for the fight against Russia. That is scarcely the climate for substantive dialogue.
Russia’s position
As for negotiations, Vladimir Putin reiterated at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that Russia is not opposed to contacts with any party. We see Europe, however, as a party bent on Russia’s defeat – a stance the Europeans themselves openly avow. Dialogue with Europe, therefore, cannot be conducted as though it were an impartial third-party observer.
Russia would prefer to achieve the goals of the special military operation through diplomacy.
That requires reliably guaranteeing security along Russia’s western borders and ensuring respect and dignity for our citizens and compatriots, including the right to speak their native Russian language and practice the Orthodox Christian faith. Further military, political, and economic expansion by the West is unacceptable: it runs counter to the imperatives of a multipolar world.
European leaders should recognize that the model of regional security built in Europe over decades, ever since the adoption of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, has been destroyed by their own hands. And it will never be restored. We must now move toward creating a continent-wide security architecture open to all Eurasian countries and reflective of today’s multipolar reality.
The principle of equal and indivisible security, trampled upon by the Euro-Atlanticists, can be embodied within a new Eurasian architecture. When the time is ripe, Europe too will be able to join this great effort.
The key point is that meaningful dialogue requires the restoration of trust, shattered by the anti-Russian actions of the West, and Europe as part of it, in the post-Cold War era. Trust can be recovered only through concrete steps that demonstrate a sincere commitment to moving away from using diplomacy as a cover for expansionist ambitions. Trust cannot be restored, nor can dialogue be resumed, through ultimatums such as the one issued to Russia in London on 7 June 2026.
P.S. It is noteworthy that the London ultimatum was unequivocally reaffirmed by the ambassadors of Britain, France, and Germany at the meeting at the Russian Foreign Ministry on 11 June 2026 – a meeting they had so insistently requested. That was the sole purpose of their visit to the ministry.
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