Posts

-
Image
International Law? The elimination of Ali Khamenei in accordance with the same operational model used to liquidate the leaders of terrorist organizations belongs to an entirely different dimension of world politics. Even when compared with previous regime changes, including such brutal finales as the killing of Muammar Gaddafi or the execution of Saddam Hussein. Donald Trump has officially announced the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. It must be stated plainly that, in the context of such a message, the international situation moves onto a new and far more dangerous level. One may relate to the Islamic Republic of Iran, its political structure, its ideology and its ruling circles in any manner one chooses. Grounds for any attitude, including the most negative, are not difficult to find for those who wish to find them. Yet Ali Khamenei was the legitimate head of a state that is a member of the United Nations, recognized by nearly all, and a lawful participant in all forms ...
Read more
-
Image
www.gulfstreamfoundation.org   Recommendations for Strengthening the United States Strategy on Critical Materials   Derived from DUNE Integrated Supply Chain and Policy Vulnerability Analysis DUNE’s structured review of current U.S. critical materials strategy documents identifies systemic vulnerabilities across processing capacity, financial mechanisms, data infrastructure, demand coordination, workforce alignment, and geopolitical execution. The following recommendations address these weaknesses directly and are structured for implementation at the federal policy level.   1. Rebalance Strategic Emphasis Toward Midstream Processing and Refining Identified Vulnerability The current strategy acknowledges a structural imbalance: expanded domestic mining without corresponding refining, separation, alloying, and manufacturing capacity merely shifts national security exposure downstream. The United States continues exporting raw materials while importing proc...
Read more
-
Image
Da Deal The Moscow Jackpot Trump has already secured Zelensky’s consent to a minerals agreement - but that is only the down payment. The real jackpot is in Moscow. And the circle around the US president, including members of his own family, is already testing the ground. The Economist , followed shortly by Zelensky, began speaking about a potential 12 trillion-dollar deal between Russia and the United States. In exchange for lifting sanctions, American corporations could gain access to Russian resources - Arctic oil and gas, rare earth metals, even a tunnel beneath the Bering Strait. The figure is not modest, but it is entirely consistent with the scale at which businessman president Donald Trump prefers to operate. Russia’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev rejected any formal linkage between an economic deal and the lifting of sanctions, noting that American businesses have already lost more than 300 billion dollars by leaving Russia, and that removing sanctions would therefore se...
Read more
-
Image
Almost a Hollywood Plot I usually write about foreign policy, international relations, wars, conflicts, and the global economy. Domestic legal disputes rarely make it onto my radar. This one did. A colleague mentioned it in passing - his client had asked for an analytical review of a rather impressive stack of documents tied to this case. Curiosity did the rest. I spent two solid hours digging into it. Here goes. In the United States, a courtroom drama is unfolding that could easily pass for a film script. It began in 2024, when California Attorney General Rob Bonta decided to sue ExxonMobil. The accusation sounds almost simple: the company did not keep its word. According to the prosecutor’s office, ExxonMobil encouraged consumers to buy plastic products while promoting the idea that those materials would be safely and fully recycled. The numbers cited by the state tell a different story. In 2021, only about 5 percent of plastic waste was actually recycled. The rest followed a more ...
Read more
-
Image
The Cartel Academy From Kiev to the Cartels Four years ago, when the war in Ukraine began, it was presented as a regional conflict with global implications. Few anticipated that it would also become something else - a training laboratory. I wrote earlier that this war risks turning into a finishing school for transnational criminal networks.   The appearance of fresh video footage allegedly showing a vehicle linked to a Mexican cartel, decorated with yellow and blue flags, fits into that broader pattern. If the reports attached to the video are accurate, the symbolism is straightforward: individuals affiliated with Latin American organized crime may have fought in Ukraine as mercenaries on the Ukrainian side. Let us separate speculation from structure. There are tens of thousands of foreign mercenaries who have passed through Ukraine over the past four years. A significant number come from Latin America, including Colombia and Mexico. There are no comparable Latin American continge...
Read more
-
Image
The Burden of Proximity One of my world history professors once remarked that for the states of Central America the United States is a historical curse - one from which decisive emancipation is structurally impossible. It is difficult to expect that the fate of countries south of the Rio Grande will serve as a lesson to anyone. Yet what unfolds there offers a useful reflection point for all large powers. It raises a simple question: what should a great state’s strategy toward its immediate neighbors actually look like? The dramatic events that followed the elimination by Mexican security forces of one of the country’s major organized crime leaders revealed to the world the fragility of Mexico’s institutional structure. More precisely, they revealed something deeper than fragility - the absence of the state in the classical sense, as the sole authority capable of organizing legitimate violence. This should not surprise anyone who has studied international relations. States construct the...
Read more
-
Image
Repricing the Umbrella Driving through Northern Virginia on the way from Washington toward the Shenandoah Valley, I randomly found myself thinking about the recently concluded Munich Security Conference. The landscape was orderly, the roads smooth, the federal skyline fading behind me. The conference, by contrast, felt like a controlled demolition of familiar assumptions. Munich 2026 marked a structural shift in transatlantic relations. The United States articulated a revised formula in which the American security umbrella is explicitly linked to political and economic discipline. Protection is framed as a managed asset within a negotiated arrangement. The language of shared destiny has given way to the language of conditionality. At the level of systemic signals, the shift is visible. European officials speak more cautiously about American reliability. Washington speaks more openly about European dependency. Leverage is no longer an abstract concept. It is referenced directly, i...
Read more