Spot on, Professor. This is a classic demonstration of the limits of conventional deterrence when applied to asymmetric geography.
We are essentially watching a modernized replay of the 1980s Tanker War playbook, but with exponentially higher stakes. By targeting critical regional infrastructure and global energy links, Tehran isn't trying to match US conventional naval power; they are exploiting the fact that Washington is deeply constrained by global economic vulnerability.
The Western strategy assumes that moving up the escalation ladder will force a rational retreat, completely miscalculating an adversary whose entire doctrine is built to leverage regional chaos.
It is a textbook escalation trap—the harder the hammer hits, the more the anvil breaks the surrounding framework.
You’re exactly right, but in addition to what you’ve pointed out in Donald Trump we’re dealing with a person who has a set of serious personality disorders. This is why in my course I cite Frank Yoemans, M. Scott Peck, Brian Klaas, Jason Stanley and Bandi Lee.
Beyond that I came to the conclusion when I was a child that in order to be a good president one has to be honest, logical and they have to do the right thing. — Trump is a disaster.
Spot on, Kevin. You’ve hit on the exact critical vulnerability at the top: when a leadership style driven by a desire for decisive, transactional "wins" meets a rigid Western strategic mindset, it creates a dangerous feedback loop.
This dynamic is actually the precise thesis of my newly published book, Operation EPIC FURY: Kill the Man, Fight the Ghost, where I trace this exact "stuck record" pattern starting with the 2020 Soleimani strike.
The administration applied a traditional, top-down military logic—assuming that decapitating leadership would force a "rational retreat." But it completely miscalculated an adversary whose doctrine is inherently designed to survive and leverage decentralization.
By killing the man, they didn't eliminate the threat; they institutionalized his asymmetric playbook. The book maps out how this played out in real-time through 2026.
Even when Washington checks off every conventional tactical box and declares the operation "officially ended," they find themselves trapped—victorious on paper, but still endlessly fighting the ghost of a distributed doctrine they tried to kill with a hammer.
The other point your comment highlights is what Daniel Schmachtenberger has called the “democratization of catastrophe-making.” This concept applies not only to asymmetric warfare, but even more so to emerging threats such as bioterrorism, cyberattacks, and the growing range of destructive capabilities that advances in AI will place within reach of individuals and small groups intent on causing harm.
That is precisely why my emphasis on promoting what is “nice” is so important. It may sound like psychobabble to some, but it isn’t. The underlying principle is straightforward: if we want increasingly powerful technologies to produce better outcomes, we must also cultivate better values, better incentives, and better leadership.
Like many other trends, this is something you can see coming from a mile away. The challenge is not recognizing the danger—it’s finding the wisdom and leadership to navigate it before it is too late.
That is a profound point, Kevin, and Schmachtenberger’s concept perfectly captures the shifting nature of tech-driven threats.
However, I think it is crucial to maintain a strict distinction between state and non-state actors here.
While advanced technologies are certainly democratizing disruption, state actors like Tehran still operate under a fundamentally different calculus than decentralized groups or individuals.
A state has a geographic 'return address.' They have critical infrastructure, a civilian population, and a regime whose ultimate priority is survival.
This means traditional deterrence isn't entirely obsolete; rather, as I mentioned, it is trapped by geography and global economic links.
The danger isn't that states are completely un-deterrable non-state actors, but that the Western model miscalculates how a rational state actor leverages regional chaos to protect itself.
When the 'anvil' is a state, the escalation ladder still exists—it’s just that the cost of climbing it is being driven up exponentially by these asymmetric dynamics.
Invoking LeMay’s 1943–1945 career is a powerful reminder of what total, industrial state-on-state warfare looks like, but it highlights the exact myth I am talking about: the illusion that 1945-style 'clean total victory' can be replicated in modern asymmetric, regional conflicts.
For a clearer parallel to the asymmetric realities we face today, we should look closer to the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902).
The British Empire possessed overwhelming conventional and industrial superiority. They captured the capitals and assumed the war was won. Yet, they were completely stymied by a new, highly mobile guerrilla strategy.
To finally force a conclusion, the British had to abandon conventional military doctrine entirely and resort to a brutal scorched-earth policy—burning farms, destroying the land, and interning civilians.
That is the true face of trying to smash an asymmetric adversary through sheer force. To achieve a 'LeMay outcome' against a deeply embedded regional actor today, a superpower cannot just execute a clean military strike; it has to be willing to completely tear down the global economic and humanitarian framework.
In the modern interconnected world, the cost of enforcing that kind of 'victory' would break the superpower itself. The hammer shatters the very room it is swinging in.
Agreed, however, DT will not rationally proceed...his ego will lead him to a dark place that will affect millions. So why not, all parties, step back and perhaps introduce a new element to the equation. A new Strait of Hormuz council, could be created, with Iran/Oman/SA and China as its members, the US could have non-voting seat. Additionally, the nuclear materials that are the subject of the dispute, could be purchased from Iran, by the US and then delivered to China for holding on Iran's behalf. China would also help oversee the Iranian nuclear program and guide it in a less threatening direction. As far as the Lebanon connection goes, it needs to be removed from the equation. Perhaps a UN force with more robust muscle or an agreement whereby the US will impound military aid to Israel if it does not comply. Your thoughts?
Howard, your proposal offers a genuinely creative institutional layout, but reading through your thoughts made me reflect on a deeper challenge we constantly face in conflict analysis: the lens through which we choose to view the board.
It is incredibly easy, particularly from a Western analytical perspective, to view geopolitical friction through a standard, top-down prism—one that naturally measures power by formal GDP, conventional military budgets, and great-power patron relations.
In that box, a state like Iran is almost automatically cast as the minor actor who must eventually seek a traditional diplomatic exit ramp.
But if we step back and look at the landscape Through Different Eyes, we see a very different reality on the ground. When I was researching the strategic architecture of the region for my book, SOLEIMANI: Martyr? Terrorist? Strategist?, what became clear is that the adversary isn't playing the same game, let alone using the same metric of power.
Their doctrine is entirely built on a philosophy of decentralized, asymmetric self-reliance. It isn't a modular puzzle where you can neatly detach 'the Lebanon connection' or assume a regional actor will comfortably subcontract its core security and nuclear sovereignty to a great power like China.
To them, autonomy is existential. When we analyze a conflict through a singular, external lens, our policy prescriptions—no matter how well-intentioned—tend to mirror-image our own logic onto the opponent.
The real danger on the escalation ladder isn't just a lack of diplomatic imagination; it's the subtle miscalculation that happens when we assume the other side views costs, risks, and leverage the exact same way we do.
What you and everyone else on the globe seems to forget is that the United States, for 80 years, has held its hand back from striking enemies as it could have (should have?). Nations such as North Korea, North Vietnam, some in the Mohammedan vein, some South of the Border . . . Have for these 80 years tweaked the big, patient (dumb?) US. Occasionally it has reached out with a gentle tap on the shoulder or chest to say “Stop it.” But it has never, since WW2, struck back with even a fraction of its might. Perhaps had the US taken the “little bullies” in its past to task as it did the big bullies in 1941-45, we would have fewer little bullies now.
Escalation ladder? Winning it? It ends at the total destruction of the enemy. Who wins that? It’s not Iran.
Nope! the words used skew in a dark fashion! The British just applied the same 'policy' as their blood relatives used in Kremlin Muscovy for the last 1000 years.
The burning of Farms was an ancient technique of endless tsars. Extirpating the aboriginals. Yes, the British just used what the Normans did to the Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxon elite knew that Genocide was a coming. They built a huge fleet and fled England, ultimately settling in successful colonies on the coast of Ukraine. The Anglo-Saxons lived successfully in Ukraine until the Muslims arrived to extirpate any and all that lived in Ukraine's Black Sea shores.
The British just used the recent Yankee invention in Ohio that the Tsars did not have in the past. Yes, huge tax expenditures were made by England for the purchase of the new 'barbed wire' to be shipped into Boer lands. The very Christian British invented the 'OLD' style concentration camp mainly to extirpate the aboriginal heathen allies of the Boers and, of course, Christian Boer women + children.
Concentration Camp deniers love that no laws exist to openly label them as such. They use the deflective word, "Internment" as if the camp was some, like a summer spa. The concentration camps were Constructed with barbed wire to concentrate and facilitate the wholesale quick butchery by the millions of the aboriginal allies of the Boers.
One notes that the the only ethnic group that loudly openly protested the British genocide of complete aboriginal peoples, were the Germans. There was not a peep heard from the Kremlin Muscovy, French, Canadians, Yankees or the various subjected tribes inside the UK. And, they all 100% knew the work of their Christian brethren.
Nope. The British mass abducted whole villages of aboriginal women + children into Concentration camps. There was zero - No - 'internment' fiction. This was not a fake Kremlin village facade trick.
One notices that the next big Genocide was run by the Kremlin Muscovy. In 1931-32-33 the Kremlin Muscovy dressed themselves up in Stalin Halloween costumes to 'trick + treat' 20,000,000 Ukrainians to slow starvation death in the vicious Muscovy run HOLODOMOR.
Do notice that their Muscovy Grand children are now in 2026 KOLONIZING Crimea in FREE home + farms stolen from Ukrainians: Just like Grand pa + Grand ma stole their FREE homes from the Ukrainians they just killed.
Do notice that there is no number given of the dead aboriginals. The British just threw the bodies of the families out for the hyenas + wildlife to devour.
But, there were signs of civility. The aboriginals who were Christians, their priests were allowed a bit of extra life to move the Christian corpses to shallow holes with soil scaped over them. Bits of wood or metal were allowed by the Christian British as token tombstones, flotsam + jetsam tokens that often amounted to hundreds of thousands.
Yep, those south african citizens of 2026 seem to have little regard for this aspect of the history of the invading Canadian + British fellas!
You’ve brought an incredibly intense and raw dimension to this thread, Ross, and your focus on the sheer brutality of state-enforced attrition hits at a profound truth.
When conventional military strategies fail to force a "rational retreat," empires inevitably pivot to total, brutal mechanics—whether it’s Kitchener’s scorched-earth campaign in South Africa or the devastating loops we are witnessing today.
That is the darkest room inside the escalation trap: when the hammer fails to shatter the adversary's doctrine, the state simply swings harder, expanding the target zone until the entire surrounding human framework is broken.
But as an analyst who studies both these macro-structural traps and the deep psychological trauma of the human beings caught inside them, I want to gently challenge where your narrative lands—and explore why it lands there.
In your response, you mention "millions of South African aboriginals" being quickly butchered by the British. Historically, that data is incorrect. During the Second Boer War, the British did intern roughly 115,000 Black South Africans in separate camps, and due to horrific neglect and disease, an estimated 14,000 to 20,000 tragically lost their lives alongside the Boer women and children. It was an undeniable humanitarian catastrophe, but it was not a multi-million-person genocide.
Why does your mind see millions there? Because active, existential trauma—the kind you are processing in real-time in 2026—naturally forces the human psyche into survival mode. When your world is actively being upended by an expansionist power, your cognitive framework builds armor. It simplifies history into a singular, eternal loop of absolute monsters versus absolute victims. To a mind enduring the weight of a modern war zone, a lower historical number can feel like a minimization of suffering, so the subconscious magnifies past atrocities to match the sheer, overwhelming scale of the pain you are feeling right now.
You are entirely right about the cruelty of empires and the sanitized, deceptive language they use to mask it. But when we look at the escalation trap, keeping our data precise isn't about minimizing tragedy—it’s the only way to understand the actual mechanics of the machine.
If we let the history blur into pure myth, we lose our ability to analyze the very loops that keep trapping us.
The strategy has already turned. We are now following an older playbook, complete infrastructure destruction. All transportation nodes (bridges, roadways, rail networks), utilities (electric, gas, water), dams, food storage and distribution are all to be destroyed. This will render their own country useless to them. There is a limited time left to come to an agreement.
John’s closing comment was that he hopes his analysis is wrong and that we ultimately reach negotiated settlements in both Ukraine and Iran. If you extrapolate that same sentiment, my “course” arrives at a similar conclusion regarding the future of the human race as a species. I sincerely hope I’m wrong—and I hope people are wise enough to consider what I have to say and follow what is sound advice.
All of these outcomes are achievable. But they require good leadership. That brings me back to a realization I had as a child: to be a good president, a person must be honest, logical, and committed to doing the right thing.
In many respects, it’s all remarkably simple—which is precisely why the current situation is so tragic.
If you look at my course and watch my short films, you’ll see that I first define a destination for humanity—a vision of where we should be striving to go. I then identify the most important obstacle to reaching that destination: allowing profound, malignant narcissists to run the show.
Unfortunately, that is precisely what we’ve allowed to happen. The result is an illustration of cause and effect.
And just like Jack Matlock just said in an interview with Glenn Diesen — we’re in deep trouble.
Add AI to the equation, and we’re in seriously deep trouble. Unless we regain control of our political system and make wiser decisions, the situation is likely to deteriorate rapidly.
That is essentially what Jack was saying. My course outlines a practical path forward to help prevent that outcome.
...impossible!, reason!: Genocide is not an anomaly, it is coded in the DNA of Western "civilization."....100% right!...rotten 'eu' (wester!) genes are up to no good yet again!
Get serious. Have you forgotten the hordes of asiatic raiders who raped and pillaged across the steppes or the warrior clans of China and Japan or the Islamic Turks and Arabs? Go back to school.
heee heee as G. Carlin said: ''education in Amerca'' Historians generally point to France as the country that has participated in and fought the most wars in European and global history. According to comprehensive military tallies and historical consensus, France has been involved in over 250 wars and major conflicts.
Reddit
+3
Because defining exactly what constitutes a "war" is highly subjective and depends on whether one counts minor territorial skirmishes, colonial conquests, or modern interventions, a few other nations also frequently top the list:
France: Famously holds the highest number of military engagements and battles in European history, participating in around 50 of the 125 major European wars fought since 1495.
Quora
United Kingdom / England: With a massive history of imperial expansion, the UK has been highly involved in over 200 wars and conflicts globally. During the height of the British Empire, it was involved in conflicts on nearly every continent.
The United States: If you look strictly at the past 100 years, the United States has been the most actively involved in global military operations, occupations, and interventions.
Quora
+1....see Spain....byh the way all the countries have contact with ''western civil...heeeee states!v.....learn won't heart!...
Historians generally point to France as the country that has participated in and fought the most wars in European and global history. According to comprehensive military tallies and historical consensus, France has been involved in over 250 wars and major conflicts.
Reddit
+3
Because defining exactly what constitutes a "war" is highly subjective and depends on whether one counts minor territorial skirmishes, colonial conquests, or modern interventions, a few other nations also frequently top the list:
France: Famously holds the highest number of military engagements and battles in European history, participating in around 50 of the 125 major European wars fought since 1495.
Quora
United Kingdom / England: With a massive history of imperial expansion, the UK has been highly involved in over 200 wars and conflicts globally. During the height of the British Empire, it was involved in conflicts on nearly every continent.
The United States: If you look strictly at the past 100 years, the United States has been the most actively involved in global military operations, occupations, and interventions.
Its still a time warp. The Prof's Ukraine section is like all last week + before + before. He drones out his personal fantasy that the USA is still involved in Ukraine. No money, no funny! The last piker was the fraud artist POTUS Barry Obama. Now, the self-abdicated Leader of the WEST MAGA POTUS Trump still loves to think that he can extort the Big GUY percentage from Putin! Trump dreams that he is a magic bean adjudicator, ready to judge that Putin keeps stolen 50 Trillion USD of Ukrainian resources that Obama gifted to Putin. But, only if the Big Guy share comes covertly to his blood relatives.
Yeah, the old con re-appears that the GODS declared that the US is some sort of magic judge for Ukraine. The UK is actually the real Leader of the WEST, as the real dollar donations to Ukraine are from the British. The Prof still has the nerve to blather to innocent pod casters that he dreams of manipulating a negotiated settlement - RUN by himself.
Again, the love for his Motherland + Muscovy Putin. Zero mention by d Prof that millions of middle + bottom fish - international war criminals of mass atrocities are stuck in their parasite KOLONIZER stolen FREE real estate in Crimea. The Muscovy KOLONIZERS must be processed, charged + tried for their international war crimes asap. Meanwhile they have to be fed as their blood relatives refuse to send Food packages to these free loaders in Crimea.
The Prof has no worries that the 'big fish' war criminals are escaping hourly back to Muscovy HQ in Moscow. The Prof keeps mentioning some lame drone theory as he avoids the humanitarian fact that zero electricity, food, gasoline + water are available to these trapped international war criminals. Putin keeps his own Muscovy tribesmen trapped in stolen Crimea, crazed that he must admit that they and the stolen real estate are goners.
All missed by the Prof - for whatever his reason is!
...impossible!, reason!: Genocide is not an anomaly, it is coded in the DNA of Western "civilization."....100% right!...rotten 'eu' (wester!) genes are up to no good yet again!
Spot on, Professor. This is a classic demonstration of the limits of conventional deterrence when applied to asymmetric geography.
We are essentially watching a modernized replay of the 1980s Tanker War playbook, but with exponentially higher stakes. By targeting critical regional infrastructure and global energy links, Tehran isn't trying to match US conventional naval power; they are exploiting the fact that Washington is deeply constrained by global economic vulnerability.
The Western strategy assumes that moving up the escalation ladder will force a rational retreat, completely miscalculating an adversary whose entire doctrine is built to leverage regional chaos.
It is a textbook escalation trap—the harder the hammer hits, the more the anvil breaks the surrounding framework.
You’re exactly right, but in addition to what you’ve pointed out in Donald Trump we’re dealing with a person who has a set of serious personality disorders. This is why in my course I cite Frank Yoemans, M. Scott Peck, Brian Klaas, Jason Stanley and Bandi Lee.
Beyond that I came to the conclusion when I was a child that in order to be a good president one has to be honest, logical and they have to do the right thing. — Trump is a disaster.
Biden was horrible. Trump is horribly horrific.
Spot on, Kevin. You’ve hit on the exact critical vulnerability at the top: when a leadership style driven by a desire for decisive, transactional "wins" meets a rigid Western strategic mindset, it creates a dangerous feedback loop.
This dynamic is actually the precise thesis of my newly published book, Operation EPIC FURY: Kill the Man, Fight the Ghost, where I trace this exact "stuck record" pattern starting with the 2020 Soleimani strike.
The administration applied a traditional, top-down military logic—assuming that decapitating leadership would force a "rational retreat." But it completely miscalculated an adversary whose doctrine is inherently designed to survive and leverage decentralization.
By killing the man, they didn't eliminate the threat; they institutionalized his asymmetric playbook. The book maps out how this played out in real-time through 2026.
Even when Washington checks off every conventional tactical box and declares the operation "officially ended," they find themselves trapped—victorious on paper, but still endlessly fighting the ghost of a distributed doctrine they tried to kill with a hammer.
The other point your comment highlights is what Daniel Schmachtenberger has called the “democratization of catastrophe-making.” This concept applies not only to asymmetric warfare, but even more so to emerging threats such as bioterrorism, cyberattacks, and the growing range of destructive capabilities that advances in AI will place within reach of individuals and small groups intent on causing harm.
That is precisely why my emphasis on promoting what is “nice” is so important. It may sound like psychobabble to some, but it isn’t. The underlying principle is straightforward: if we want increasingly powerful technologies to produce better outcomes, we must also cultivate better values, better incentives, and better leadership.
Like many other trends, this is something you can see coming from a mile away. The challenge is not recognizing the danger—it’s finding the wisdom and leadership to navigate it before it is too late.
That is a profound point, Kevin, and Schmachtenberger’s concept perfectly captures the shifting nature of tech-driven threats.
However, I think it is crucial to maintain a strict distinction between state and non-state actors here.
While advanced technologies are certainly democratizing disruption, state actors like Tehran still operate under a fundamentally different calculus than decentralized groups or individuals.
A state has a geographic 'return address.' They have critical infrastructure, a civilian population, and a regime whose ultimate priority is survival.
This means traditional deterrence isn't entirely obsolete; rather, as I mentioned, it is trapped by geography and global economic links.
The danger isn't that states are completely un-deterrable non-state actors, but that the Western model miscalculates how a rational state actor leverages regional chaos to protect itself.
When the 'anvil' is a state, the escalation ladder still exists—it’s just that the cost of climbing it is being driven up exponentially by these asymmetric dynamics.
You should look up Curtis Lemay...pay particular attention to his career 1943-1945. I fear that this is what is coming.
Invoking LeMay’s 1943–1945 career is a powerful reminder of what total, industrial state-on-state warfare looks like, but it highlights the exact myth I am talking about: the illusion that 1945-style 'clean total victory' can be replicated in modern asymmetric, regional conflicts.
For a clearer parallel to the asymmetric realities we face today, we should look closer to the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902).
The British Empire possessed overwhelming conventional and industrial superiority. They captured the capitals and assumed the war was won. Yet, they were completely stymied by a new, highly mobile guerrilla strategy.
To finally force a conclusion, the British had to abandon conventional military doctrine entirely and resort to a brutal scorched-earth policy—burning farms, destroying the land, and interning civilians.
That is the true face of trying to smash an asymmetric adversary through sheer force. To achieve a 'LeMay outcome' against a deeply embedded regional actor today, a superpower cannot just execute a clean military strike; it has to be willing to completely tear down the global economic and humanitarian framework.
In the modern interconnected world, the cost of enforcing that kind of 'victory' would break the superpower itself. The hammer shatters the very room it is swinging in.
Agreed, however, DT will not rationally proceed...his ego will lead him to a dark place that will affect millions. So why not, all parties, step back and perhaps introduce a new element to the equation. A new Strait of Hormuz council, could be created, with Iran/Oman/SA and China as its members, the US could have non-voting seat. Additionally, the nuclear materials that are the subject of the dispute, could be purchased from Iran, by the US and then delivered to China for holding on Iran's behalf. China would also help oversee the Iranian nuclear program and guide it in a less threatening direction. As far as the Lebanon connection goes, it needs to be removed from the equation. Perhaps a UN force with more robust muscle or an agreement whereby the US will impound military aid to Israel if it does not comply. Your thoughts?
Howard, your proposal offers a genuinely creative institutional layout, but reading through your thoughts made me reflect on a deeper challenge we constantly face in conflict analysis: the lens through which we choose to view the board.
It is incredibly easy, particularly from a Western analytical perspective, to view geopolitical friction through a standard, top-down prism—one that naturally measures power by formal GDP, conventional military budgets, and great-power patron relations.
In that box, a state like Iran is almost automatically cast as the minor actor who must eventually seek a traditional diplomatic exit ramp.
But if we step back and look at the landscape Through Different Eyes, we see a very different reality on the ground. When I was researching the strategic architecture of the region for my book, SOLEIMANI: Martyr? Terrorist? Strategist?, what became clear is that the adversary isn't playing the same game, let alone using the same metric of power.
Their doctrine is entirely built on a philosophy of decentralized, asymmetric self-reliance. It isn't a modular puzzle where you can neatly detach 'the Lebanon connection' or assume a regional actor will comfortably subcontract its core security and nuclear sovereignty to a great power like China.
To them, autonomy is existential. When we analyze a conflict through a singular, external lens, our policy prescriptions—no matter how well-intentioned—tend to mirror-image our own logic onto the opponent.
The real danger on the escalation ladder isn't just a lack of diplomatic imagination; it's the subtle miscalculation that happens when we assume the other side views costs, risks, and leverage the exact same way we do.
What you and everyone else on the globe seems to forget is that the United States, for 80 years, has held its hand back from striking enemies as it could have (should have?). Nations such as North Korea, North Vietnam, some in the Mohammedan vein, some South of the Border . . . Have for these 80 years tweaked the big, patient (dumb?) US. Occasionally it has reached out with a gentle tap on the shoulder or chest to say “Stop it.” But it has never, since WW2, struck back with even a fraction of its might. Perhaps had the US taken the “little bullies” in its past to task as it did the big bullies in 1941-45, we would have fewer little bullies now.
Escalation ladder? Winning it? It ends at the total destruction of the enemy. Who wins that? It’s not Iran.
Nope! the words used skew in a dark fashion! The British just applied the same 'policy' as their blood relatives used in Kremlin Muscovy for the last 1000 years.
The burning of Farms was an ancient technique of endless tsars. Extirpating the aboriginals. Yes, the British just used what the Normans did to the Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxon elite knew that Genocide was a coming. They built a huge fleet and fled England, ultimately settling in successful colonies on the coast of Ukraine. The Anglo-Saxons lived successfully in Ukraine until the Muslims arrived to extirpate any and all that lived in Ukraine's Black Sea shores.
The British just used the recent Yankee invention in Ohio that the Tsars did not have in the past. Yes, huge tax expenditures were made by England for the purchase of the new 'barbed wire' to be shipped into Boer lands. The very Christian British invented the 'OLD' style concentration camp mainly to extirpate the aboriginal heathen allies of the Boers and, of course, Christian Boer women + children.
Concentration Camp deniers love that no laws exist to openly label them as such. They use the deflective word, "Internment" as if the camp was some, like a summer spa. The concentration camps were Constructed with barbed wire to concentrate and facilitate the wholesale quick butchery by the millions of the aboriginal allies of the Boers.
One notes that the the only ethnic group that loudly openly protested the British genocide of complete aboriginal peoples, were the Germans. There was not a peep heard from the Kremlin Muscovy, French, Canadians, Yankees or the various subjected tribes inside the UK. And, they all 100% knew the work of their Christian brethren.
Nope. The British mass abducted whole villages of aboriginal women + children into Concentration camps. There was zero - No - 'internment' fiction. This was not a fake Kremlin village facade trick.
One notices that the next big Genocide was run by the Kremlin Muscovy. In 1931-32-33 the Kremlin Muscovy dressed themselves up in Stalin Halloween costumes to 'trick + treat' 20,000,000 Ukrainians to slow starvation death in the vicious Muscovy run HOLODOMOR.
Do notice that their Muscovy Grand children are now in 2026 KOLONIZING Crimea in FREE home + farms stolen from Ukrainians: Just like Grand pa + Grand ma stole their FREE homes from the Ukrainians they just killed.
Do notice that there is no number given of the dead aboriginals. The British just threw the bodies of the families out for the hyenas + wildlife to devour.
But, there were signs of civility. The aboriginals who were Christians, their priests were allowed a bit of extra life to move the Christian corpses to shallow holes with soil scaped over them. Bits of wood or metal were allowed by the Christian British as token tombstones, flotsam + jetsam tokens that often amounted to hundreds of thousands.
Yep, those south african citizens of 2026 seem to have little regard for this aspect of the history of the invading Canadian + British fellas!
You’ve brought an incredibly intense and raw dimension to this thread, Ross, and your focus on the sheer brutality of state-enforced attrition hits at a profound truth.
When conventional military strategies fail to force a "rational retreat," empires inevitably pivot to total, brutal mechanics—whether it’s Kitchener’s scorched-earth campaign in South Africa or the devastating loops we are witnessing today.
That is the darkest room inside the escalation trap: when the hammer fails to shatter the adversary's doctrine, the state simply swings harder, expanding the target zone until the entire surrounding human framework is broken.
But as an analyst who studies both these macro-structural traps and the deep psychological trauma of the human beings caught inside them, I want to gently challenge where your narrative lands—and explore why it lands there.
In your response, you mention "millions of South African aboriginals" being quickly butchered by the British. Historically, that data is incorrect. During the Second Boer War, the British did intern roughly 115,000 Black South Africans in separate camps, and due to horrific neglect and disease, an estimated 14,000 to 20,000 tragically lost their lives alongside the Boer women and children. It was an undeniable humanitarian catastrophe, but it was not a multi-million-person genocide.
Why does your mind see millions there? Because active, existential trauma—the kind you are processing in real-time in 2026—naturally forces the human psyche into survival mode. When your world is actively being upended by an expansionist power, your cognitive framework builds armor. It simplifies history into a singular, eternal loop of absolute monsters versus absolute victims. To a mind enduring the weight of a modern war zone, a lower historical number can feel like a minimization of suffering, so the subconscious magnifies past atrocities to match the sheer, overwhelming scale of the pain you are feeling right now.
You are entirely right about the cruelty of empires and the sanitized, deceptive language they use to mask it. But when we look at the escalation trap, keeping our data precise isn't about minimizing tragedy—it’s the only way to understand the actual mechanics of the machine.
If we let the history blur into pure myth, we lose our ability to analyze the very loops that keep trapping us.
Stay safe out there.
Up the escalation ladder, deeper into the quagmire. Deeper into the quagmire, closer to civil disorder on the home front.
Yup — As John once said “the pursuit of liberalism abroad has hurt liberalism at home”.
The strategy has already turned. We are now following an older playbook, complete infrastructure destruction. All transportation nodes (bridges, roadways, rail networks), utilities (electric, gas, water), dams, food storage and distribution are all to be destroyed. This will render their own country useless to them. There is a limited time left to come to an agreement.
John’s closing comment was that he hopes his analysis is wrong and that we ultimately reach negotiated settlements in both Ukraine and Iran. If you extrapolate that same sentiment, my “course” arrives at a similar conclusion regarding the future of the human race as a species. I sincerely hope I’m wrong—and I hope people are wise enough to consider what I have to say and follow what is sound advice.
All of these outcomes are achievable. But they require good leadership. That brings me back to a realization I had as a child: to be a good president, a person must be honest, logical, and committed to doing the right thing.
In many respects, it’s all remarkably simple—which is precisely why the current situation is so tragic.
If you look at my course and watch my short films, you’ll see that I first define a destination for humanity—a vision of where we should be striving to go. I then identify the most important obstacle to reaching that destination: allowing profound, malignant narcissists to run the show.
Unfortunately, that is precisely what we’ve allowed to happen. The result is an illustration of cause and effect.
And just like Jack Matlock just said in an interview with Glenn Diesen — we’re in deep trouble.
Add AI to the equation, and we’re in seriously deep trouble. Unless we regain control of our political system and make wiser decisions, the situation is likely to deteriorate rapidly.
That is essentially what Jack was saying. My course outlines a practical path forward to help prevent that outcome.
Trump and Netanyahu need to shoot themselves.
...impossible!, reason!: Genocide is not an anomaly, it is coded in the DNA of Western "civilization."....100% right!...rotten 'eu' (wester!) genes are up to no good yet again!
Get serious. Have you forgotten the hordes of asiatic raiders who raped and pillaged across the steppes or the warrior clans of China and Japan or the Islamic Turks and Arabs? Go back to school.
heee heee as G. Carlin said: ''education in Amerca'' Historians generally point to France as the country that has participated in and fought the most wars in European and global history. According to comprehensive military tallies and historical consensus, France has been involved in over 250 wars and major conflicts.
Reddit
+3
Because defining exactly what constitutes a "war" is highly subjective and depends on whether one counts minor territorial skirmishes, colonial conquests, or modern interventions, a few other nations also frequently top the list:
France: Famously holds the highest number of military engagements and battles in European history, participating in around 50 of the 125 major European wars fought since 1495.
Quora
United Kingdom / England: With a massive history of imperial expansion, the UK has been highly involved in over 200 wars and conflicts globally. During the height of the British Empire, it was involved in conflicts on nearly every continent.
The United States: If you look strictly at the past 100 years, the United States has been the most actively involved in global military operations, occupations, and interventions.
Quora
+1....see Spain....byh the way all the countries have contact with ''western civil...heeeee states!v.....learn won't heart!...
What? You're not sane, are you?
Historians generally point to France as the country that has participated in and fought the most wars in European and global history. According to comprehensive military tallies and historical consensus, France has been involved in over 250 wars and major conflicts.
Reddit
+3
Because defining exactly what constitutes a "war" is highly subjective and depends on whether one counts minor territorial skirmishes, colonial conquests, or modern interventions, a few other nations also frequently top the list:
France: Famously holds the highest number of military engagements and battles in European history, participating in around 50 of the 125 major European wars fought since 1495.
Quora
United Kingdom / England: With a massive history of imperial expansion, the UK has been highly involved in over 200 wars and conflicts globally. During the height of the British Empire, it was involved in conflicts on nearly every continent.
The United States: If you look strictly at the past 100 years, the United States has been the most actively involved in global military operations, occupations, and interventions.
Quora
+1
Are you?
Relatively speaking, yes.
In your opinion but never confirmed, right.
Love seeing the panic as the US continues to dismantle the terrorist iranian regime.
Part of what’s going here is the fact that Trump is a classic bully.
What do you think is the goal of the current war? I don’t think you touched on this topic even once.
Its still a time warp. The Prof's Ukraine section is like all last week + before + before. He drones out his personal fantasy that the USA is still involved in Ukraine. No money, no funny! The last piker was the fraud artist POTUS Barry Obama. Now, the self-abdicated Leader of the WEST MAGA POTUS Trump still loves to think that he can extort the Big GUY percentage from Putin! Trump dreams that he is a magic bean adjudicator, ready to judge that Putin keeps stolen 50 Trillion USD of Ukrainian resources that Obama gifted to Putin. But, only if the Big Guy share comes covertly to his blood relatives.
Yeah, the old con re-appears that the GODS declared that the US is some sort of magic judge for Ukraine. The UK is actually the real Leader of the WEST, as the real dollar donations to Ukraine are from the British. The Prof still has the nerve to blather to innocent pod casters that he dreams of manipulating a negotiated settlement - RUN by himself.
Again, the love for his Motherland + Muscovy Putin. Zero mention by d Prof that millions of middle + bottom fish - international war criminals of mass atrocities are stuck in their parasite KOLONIZER stolen FREE real estate in Crimea. The Muscovy KOLONIZERS must be processed, charged + tried for their international war crimes asap. Meanwhile they have to be fed as their blood relatives refuse to send Food packages to these free loaders in Crimea.
The Prof has no worries that the 'big fish' war criminals are escaping hourly back to Muscovy HQ in Moscow. The Prof keeps mentioning some lame drone theory as he avoids the humanitarian fact that zero electricity, food, gasoline + water are available to these trapped international war criminals. Putin keeps his own Muscovy tribesmen trapped in stolen Crimea, crazed that he must admit that they and the stolen real estate are goners.
All missed by the Prof - for whatever his reason is!
THE US, ISRAEL AND EU ARE AT FAULT FOR ALL THE WAR AND AGGRESSION.
see comment:
https://substack.com/@wilrodx108853
You sound like a little sister crying to mommy that big brother is at it again.
...impossible!, reason!: Genocide is not an anomaly, it is coded in the DNA of Western "civilization."....100% right!...rotten 'eu' (wester!) genes are up to no good yet again!
You are insane. Genocide coded in the European DNA? Good grief.
John,
Would you email me djacobs@fielding.edu as your convenience?
See my website at fourarrowsbooks.com or fourarrowsworldview.com.