The United States has long operated under a seductive strategic fantasy. Remove the leader of an adversary organization, whether a drug cartel, a terrorist group, or a sovereign state, and that organization will collapse, enabling American interests to fill the resulting vacuum. However, decades of academic literature, hard empirical data from Mexico's drug war, and the lived consequences of America's post 9/11 targeted killing campaigns all tell a damning story many in the DC ruling class refuse to acknowledge. Decapitation strategies are, at best, tactically satisfying and strategically...

Economic sanctions have become the defining coercive instrument of American foreign policy. Currently, roughly 27% of the world's countries are under sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union, or the United Nations—up from just 4% in the early 1960s. A landmark 2025 study published in The Lancet Global Health by economists Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón, and Mark Weisbrot has put a number on the cumulative death toll of these measures. Unilateral sanctions kill approximately 564,000 people per year, a figure comparable to the total annual mortality burden of armed...

The recent ceasefire between Israel and Iran may have paused the most intense phase of direct military confrontation, but it has done nothing to resolve the deeper questions about Middle Eastern stability that have emerged since October 7, 2023. Behind the temporary calm lies a profound transformation in Israeli strategic thinking, one that has moved from containment to active regional reorganization. Israel is not a normal democracy that abides by the rule of law or legal restraint. It is very much an expansionist state with bold ambitions and a demonstrated willingness to break...

Iran is not some fragile backwater that will crumble under the weight of American bombs. It is a civilization state with thousands of years of continuous existence, a population of ninety million people, and a geography of mountains, deserts, and underground fortifications specifically designed to resist foreign subjugation. The notion that air power alone can decapitate its leadership, destroy its infrastructure, and produce regime change represents a fantasy that scholars have debunked repeatedly over the past century. Yet here we are, over a month into Operation Epic Fury, watching...

The American empire appears to be in retreat. Humiliated by Russia in Eastern Europe, outmaneuvered by China in East Asia, and bogged down in a conflict with Iran in the Middle East, the United States has turned its gaze southward. Unable to win the great power competition across Eurasia, the Trump administration has increasingly embarked on the most aggressive militarization of Latin America policy in a generation, seeking victories in what Washington has long considered its backyard. The result has been what observers are calling the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, a framework that...

The United States can conjure trillions of dollars from thin air through the magic of the Federal Reserve's printing press. What it cannot conjure into existence are the missiles, interceptors, and precision munitions that modern warfare devours at a pace Washington never prepared for. The Iran conflict has laid bare a truth that defense analysts have warned about for years. America's military industrial base has atrophied into a hollow shell incapable of sustaining the imperial ambitions that politicians in both parties continue to pursue. Operation Epic Fury burned through roughly $3.7...

When American and Israeli warplanes struck Iran on February 28, 2026, launching what Washington dubbed Operation Epic Fury, most NATO allies fell into line. Spain did not. In the days that followed, the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez barred American forces from using the Rota and Morón de la Frontera air bases in southern Spain. Defense Minister Margarita Robles declared that Spain had provided "no assistance of any kind, absolutely none" from either base in connection with the Iran strikes, while Sánchez called the operation an "unjustified, dangerous military intervention that...