Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Military Page 2 of 15

Short Take on Iran, Russia and the Ukraine: Cui Bono?

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On March 3, 2026

41 Comments

~by Sean Paul Kelley

Cui bono? (From the Latin, who stands to gain?) Who benefits from our war on Iran, internationally speaking? And who loses?

First, the Ukraine loses bad the longer the attack on Iran continues, as all the oxygen is sucked into a vortext surrounding the Persian Gulf. All the weapon systems the Ukraine desperately needs are being consumed rapidly over the skies of Iran and the Gulf States. This will undoubtedly hasten the Ukrainian Armed Forces collapse as a meaningful battlefield foe. Score one for Russia.

Second, energy prices will rise, and if the Straits of Hormuz get shut the Europeans will have to re-evaluate their energy supplies vis-a-vis Russia. Score two for Russia. Also, score one for Texas oilmen, who have watched WTI rise from $58 a barrel a month ago to $73.78. Royalty checks be getting phat!

Third, diplomatic pressure will decrease on Pootie-poot and Lavrov due to European energy desperation and all the diplo-oxygen being sucked out of the UN and other multi-lateral forumns, as if a thermobaric bomb went off. This widens Putin’s and Lavrov’s room to manuever even more. It also increases the chance Russia delivers a devastating denouement to the ‘Rules Based Order’ with an unmistakable battlefield victory. As my teachers said about school-yard fights when I was growing up (I went to an all boys school most of my life): you get your ass whooped, you probably deserved it. Score three for Russia.

Fourth, with the US murder/assassination of Iran’s Surpreme leader the precedent has been set, nay, locked the fuck in, for Russia to lob an Oreshnik or two Zelensky’s way and damn the consequences. The US could hardly protest. Not with a straight face. Score four for the Russkis.

Not to beat a frog at the bottom of a well, as the Chinese proverb goes, but the Ukraine is the biggest loser thus far and Russia the biggest winner as of today. The Euros are losing as well, but seem determined to snatch fantasy from the maw of reality. Israel is also on the losing end. Have you seen some of the explosions in Tel Aviv? This Iranian strike is positively surreal. Looks like that Israeli Iron Dome has turned into an Iranian Golden Shower.

Then again, if Bibi pops off a nuke or two, all bets are off.

Commentary On The Iran War, March 2, 2026

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On March 2, 2026

24 Comments

If you didn’t read my two previous piece, the second is about the math of missiles/drones vs. Interceptors. (Spoiler: Iran, if it keeps going, will run the US/Israel and Gulf States out of interceptors long before it runs out of missiles and drones.) The first was a general overview from day one.

I’m going to hit a bunch of different points in this post. First, Trump and Hegseth have said they are considering a ground invasion. This is beyond stupid. First, where will they stage the troops? There’s nowhere near that Iran can’t hit.

Second, have they looked at a topographical map of Iran?

Notice the mountains? Imagine trying to invade that.

The sheer stupid is beyond comprehension by anyone with a room temperature IQ. There is a hangover of people thinking this is 1991 and Iran is Iraq. Iran has better missiles than the US does. It’s larger than Iraq was, it has more people, it has allies. (China appears to be sharing real time satellite intelligence with Iran and has a land route which lets it ship in whatever Iran needs to build more missiles and drones.)

Americans seem to think they still have all the advantages they had in 1991: a military which is more advanced than anyone else’s (no), a much larger military than now, NATO allies who still have their Cold War sized armies, an enemy who will sit still for 6 months while they build up forces, etc… America then and America now are not the same, America is FAR weaker than it was and its allies are virtually disarmed. Only France is at all credible, and even they have a very small military.

A good summary of this is provided by Lee Slusher, writing before the war.

The Gulf States and Saudi Arabia are all being hit hard and the US is not protecting them. The UAE claims a 100% shootdown rate and Qatar over 80%. I believe neither, but even if true, irrelevant, because they will soon run out of interceptor missiles.

BREAKING: The UAE is projected to exhaust its interceptor missile stock within one week at the current rate of fire, and Qatar within four days; both are urgently seeking additional military support from the United States – Bloomberg

(Spoiler: no additional interceptors will be arriving. If there are any extra, they go to Israel.)

A Saudi analyst sums up what I suspect all of them are thinking:

America has abandoned us, and focused its defense systems on protecting Israel, leaving the Gulf states that host its military bases at the mercy of Iranian missiles and drones

Lie down with the devil, get up buggered, as the saying goes.

What the Gulf States, especially, are recognizing is that US bases don’t protect them, they make them a target and that the US doesn’t actually care about them and won’t bother to defend them. They’ve gone from satrapies under US protection (which they were, remember that Gulf 1 was to save Kuwait) to expendable meat shields for the Empire. They have to be thinking they’d be better off without the bases.

There have been hits on energy infrastructure. Iran says they didn’t do it, America says they did. My feeling is that Iran is telling the truth, not because I believe they wouldn’t lie, but because attacking oil infrastructure means their infrastructure becomes a target as well and that’s not in their self-interest. I suspect this is a false flag attack to try and get Saudi Arabia, in particular, to join fully in the war.

Germany, France and Britain have said that they will help America militarily. I think the best response to this is Alemanno’s:

The most baffling thing about Europe’s support for regime change in Iran is that it contradicts its own interests. American war leads to: – higher energy price – influx of refugees – ensuing far-right surge – further damage rule-based order

Note also that Germany has almost no interceptors left (they went to Ukraine) and are within range of Iranian missiles. I doubt Iran will attack them, but they can. Germany might want to think hard about that.

Many people are saying this is 12 dimensional chess. The idea is to hurt China’s oil imports. Maybe (no), but it won’t matter much in the middle term:

Around 90% of Iran’s crude exports go to China, but the country is well prepared for disruption. Small independent refineries hold ample near-term supply, while Iranian oil already in transit could cover roughly five months of demand. China has also built large reserves—about 200 days of import cover—helped by discounted crude from Iran and Russia. Bottom line: even if Iranian flows are disrupted, the impact on China is likely manageable.

This also doesn’t make sense because the war with Iran, if goes on even another few days, means war with China is impossible. The interceptor stockpiles will take years to replenish, and China has way more missiles and drones (and the ability to manufacture them at scale) than Iran. By the time they are replenished, China will be so much stronger than the US that even American supremacists will not be able to pretend there is the least chance America could win.

The war, in the end, comes down to math. The US/Israel and whatever pathetic forces European allies commit are in a race: they have to take out launchers and missile suppliers faster than Iran depletes interceptor stocks. My bet is they lose that race, but that’s the race and if you think it comes down to anything else, you are mistaken, leaving aside the possibility of using nukes.

If the US loses this war it is America’s last great hurrah. Everyone will move away from them: they can’t defend their allies, they can’t be trusted to negotiate or keep agreements, and their military will be defenseless for years against the signature weapons of modern warfare: drones and missiles.

Empires die ugly. But America’s empire is dying.

And finally, Iran is in the right here, morally. We all know it.

Update:

Update 2: I forgot to factor in that hits on US airbases reduce the US ability to sortie planes. The number of US attacks on Iran is also dropping.

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The Simple Math Of the Iran War

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On March 1, 2026

40 Comments

Thaad interceptor missiles have a production of about eight a month. Stockpiles are in the low hundreds. Ground based interceptors.

Patriot missiles had a production of 620 in 2025. Stockpile numbers are unclear, but low thousands is likely. They miss a lot, and usually two to four are shot per interception attempt.

Thirty-nine SM-3 missiles were produced in 2025. Stockpiles are at about 500. These are used by AEGIS naval defenses.

Note that none of these can be manufactured without supplies from China.

Estimates of Iranian missiles are around two to three thousand. Iranian drones? Tens of thousands. They used many up during the last war, but China has helped them rapidly manufacture more.

The math is simple. If Iran keeps firing, and the US/Israel does not take out the launchers and missile stockpiles in large numbers, Iran will run the US and Israel (it has its own variants, but the same supply issues) out of interceptors. At that point Iran hits everything it shoots at.

If Iran just keeps going long enough, it WILL win the war. The main danger is Iran’s leaders accepting a cease-fire too soon. If they are smart and have learned their lesson, they will keep going, and when they have supremacy, they will flatten Israel and all US bases, including taking out Israeli power and their desalanization plants.

If they don’t, the US and Israel will be back in a year to try again.

Iran is in this situation because they repeatedly stood down and did not establish deterrence. They had the theoretical capacity, but refused to use it, making America and Israel think they could just keep attacking Iran and there would be no significant retaliation.

And yes, the US or Israel could use nukes, but if they do, all bets are off, the repercussions would be seismic. (And Iran can make a dirty nuke any time they want, they already have that ability. One dirty nuke hits Israel, a postage stamp sized country, and it is uninhabitable.)

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Trump’s Attack On Defense Contractors & The Fed

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On January 12, 2026

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This is another case of Trump doing the right thing in theory. From Matt Stoller:

Trump also issued an executive order to ban buybacks, dividends, and cap executive compensation for defense contractors. The rumor is that DOD deputy secretary Steve Feinberg complained about the unwillingness of the contractors to do competent work. Feinberg is a private equity guy, and he proposed this crackdown.

“Many large contractors,” goes the order” “while underperforming on existing contracts — pursue newer, more lucrative contracts, stock buy-backs, and excessive dividends to shareholders at the cost of production capacity, innovation, and on-time delivery.”

Now this is all good policy. In fact I’ve called for similar policies (I would allow reasonable dividends) on all corporations, without exception. Corporations are run, right now, to make the most money possible for those who control them, which usually means the executives, with some exceptions. Since stock options are how much of the excessive pay is delivered, and since stock-buybacks drive up stock prices, instead of spending money on organic corporate growth executives juice stock prices and thus their compensation.

American defense contractor performance during the Ukraine war has been embarrassing. Russia increased its production of weapons and munition massively, while the US has barely increased production at all. This has led to Russia having massive artillery, drone and missile advantage.

This is an attempt by Trump to force defense contractors to use their profits to increase production and re-invest in things like quality and research.

Trump often does the right thing conceptually, he just almost always screws up the details, as he did with tariffs. I rather doubt this will work much better. Still it’s a step in the right direction, though I don’t think increased production of American weapons is good for anyone.

Combined with Trump’s proposed 50% hike in the military budget this makes the Trump administration’s play obvious, if it wasn’t already. The only thing the US has left right now is its military. It’s behind in 89% of techs, the dollar is well on its way to losing reserve and primary trade currency status, and China has far more industry.

But the US still has the world’s best expeditionary and force projection military. This has been demonstrated in Venezuela, not so much by Maduro’s kidnapping, as by the attempt to blackmail Venezuela with a naval blockade to give control of its oil to D.C. (I don’t think this is going to work out very well for the US, for a variety of reasons, but it may work for a few years.)

If all you’ve got is a big stick, well, that’s what you will use. But if defense contractors don’t get their act together you could spend three times as much money and get almost nothing for it, since they can’t build any large amount of weapons or ammunition or ships in any amount of time that isn’t measured in years. Longer than Trump’s remaining term.

(Note that China has a veto over all this. They can shut down almost all weapon production any time they choose just by restricting military use tech and resources like rare earths. They can do what FDR did to the Japanese with ban on oil sales any time they choose, and they’re not stupid, they know it. The more they disentangle themselves from the US, the more they may consider doing so, as America keeps attacking their trade partners.)

Now on to the Fed. The DOJ has charged the head of the Federal Reserve with perjury.

Here’s a transcript of Powell’s video statement.

Good evening. On Friday, the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas, threatening a criminal indictment related to my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June.

That testimony concerned, in part, a multi-year project to renovate historic Federal Reserve office buildings. I have deep respect for the rule of law and for accountability in our democracy. No one-certainly not the Chair of the Federal Reserve-is above the law. But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the Administration’s threats and ongoing pressure.

This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings. It is not about Congress’s oversight role. The Fed, through testimony and other public disclosures, made every effort to keep Congress informed about the renovation project. Those are pretexts.

The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President. This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions, or whether, instead, monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.

I have served at the Federal Reserve under four Administrations-Republicans and Democrats alike. In every case, I have carried out my duties without political fear or favor, focused solely on our mandate of price stability and maximum employment. Public service sometimes requires standing firm in the face of threats. I will continue to do the job the Senate confirmed me to do-with integrity and a commitment to serving the American people. Thank you.

The problem here is that we have two bad actors colliding. Trump wants to set interest rates based on his political needs, but the Federal Reserve’s policies for over 45 years now have blown multiple asset bubbles, bailed out rich people repeatedly, and deliberately kept unemployment higher than it would otherwise have been. Powell has been no better than his predecessors, his policies have favored the rich and Private Equity.

As a philosophical matter I don’t believe in central bank independence. It should be controlled by elected officials. But these charges are, as Powell notes, obviously political bullshit, just another weaponizing of law enforcement against Trump’s enemies. The irony is that Trump could get what he wants using his actual powers: he can’t replace the Federal Reserve Chair, but he can fire every other board member for cause. Even if the Supremes decide not to back him, which is unlikely, he’d have his own people in place for quite a while before they could act and they could outvote Powell.

And, since Trump is an incompetent boob, control of the Federal Reserve wouldn’t make things better.

As Stoller notes none of this is likely to amount to much because Trump’s team is deeply infiltrated by the usual suspects, people who don’t really want to control prices, reduce inflation or reduce the amount of money rich people get. Even if Trump wants to, his team won’t execute and he’s not the type of executive who’s capable of riding herd on uncooperative subordinates.

Still, there’s a clear policy direction here: an attempt to make the levers of government work for the administration. Lower prices domestically (won’t work) and make the military more effective so that the US can use it as a club, since all other sources of American power are in decline or outright failing.

Trump could screw up boiling water, but there’s a lot of legacy strength still left in the US. Expect things to get worse for weaker powers and American citizens for some time to come.

 

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How To Defeat The US Militarily As A Weaker Power

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On January 6, 2026

14 Comments

Willingness to fight and to absorb damage is the most important thing. The Yemenis lost leaders, civilians and port facilities. They just kept going until the US withdrew. Everyone except the Chinese walks careful around the US because they know it can do a lot of damage to them: more than they can do to it.

But as the Vietnamese, Taliban, and Ansar Allah proved, if you’re willing to accept lopsided exchange numbers you can win just by being a lot tougher than Americans are. They’ll eventually give up and go away.

This was, by the way, Bin Laden’s explicit policy. He wrote as much. Get the Americans to invade Afghanistan and do to them what the Afghans did to Russia. It didn’t work that great (slow bleed, since they didn’t have Superpower support like they did against Russia) but then Bush decided to attack Iraq and whether you consider the occupation a win or a loss, it was a clusterfuck.

Venezuela is trying to avoid armed conflict, in part, I suspect, because they aren’t a unified society. That means the cost for the US is almost zero.

Hezbollah had the same problem with Israel and the US and it cost them a great deal. It may cost them everything. Their problem is and was exacerbated by the sectarian nature of Lebanon. If they had gone all out against the Israelis they could have inflicted massive damage, but Israeli retaliation might well have led to a civil war as other factions blamed them. Additionally, much of the issue, as with Iran, appears to have simply been a constitutionally extremely cautious leadership. (Khameini’s refusal to get nuclear weapons, in particular, is political malpractice of the highest order.)

America can absolutely be beaten. In fact, the US war record since WWII is abysmal. Great at winning battles, but if the opponent is willing to take the hits, the US cannot stay the course.

There are damn good reasons for trying to placate the US. The amount of damage they can do is insane.

But Trump is, even more than any other American President of my lifetime, a classic bully. If you back down to him, he takes that as a sign of weakness and that he can get more. He will keep pushing and taking till he has everything, or until you fight back and hurt him, even if it’s only just a little.

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Has China Put America Into the pre-WWII “Japan Trap?”

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On October 20, 2025

33 Comments

Most modern weapon systems require rare earths to manufacture, including expendables like missiles and drones. Rare earths are less mined than they are refined, and China controls over 90% of the refining capability. Rare earths are generally found in small amounts in other ores. For example, Gallium in Aluminum. To get Gallium, you have to refine mountains of aluminum. Gallium comes from Bauxite as part of the refining process.

Fifty grams of Gallium per metric ton of refined aluminum.

China produces 98% of it.

Now Canada used to produce a lot of Gallium, as a side benefit of processing a lot of aluminum. But Canadian aluminum wasn’t as cheap as Chinese Aluminum. And this is the problem, if you want to scale you need long term contracts not just for Gallium but the Aluminum. (Do you trust any contract underwritten by the US government? If so, many bridges are available for sale to you.)

Every rare earth has similar issues.

Now cast your mind back to pre-war Asia. Japan is kicking ass, especially against the Chinese. They’ve conquered Taiwan, Korea and South Manchuria. All of this requires lots of oil, and they buy that oil from America, primarily, which was the Saudi Arabia of the day. FDR (who hated the Japanese and was a Sinophile) cut off oil exports to Japan.

Japan had only so much in the way of oil reserves. It decided to use them to go to war, grabbing as much territory as possible, while they still existed. Some of their conquests: Burma, the Dutch East Indies, and Borneo, had oil.

The situation today isn’t identical. There’s no non-China rare earth production to seize. Everyone else is pretty much happy to sell to America, they just don’t have enough to matter.

 

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But what does matter is that if China’s rare earth ban continues, America loses the ability to make large volumes of advanced weapons. Every time I look into estimates of how long it will take to get rare earths production up and running the West, the optimistic numbers are at about ten years, with a median around twenty. China itself took about twenty years, in the 80s and 90s.

China is getting stronger over time. Everyone with sense admits that. Even before the rare-earth ban it was clear that the West is growing weaker. In ten years, let alone twenty, no one will be able to pretend America can win a war against China.

So the rare earths ban means that if the US wants war against China, it has to be soon. Within a year, I’d say.

Note that this isn’t just about China. The West supplies Ukraine and Israel, for example, with weapons which have tons (literally) of rare earths in them. The ability to keep doing this is being taken away.

Heck, forget arming proxies, the West won’t be able to produce enough missiles and drones and radar and so on for its own military needs, meaning its ability to project power and keep other nations cowed and in line will go way down.

(At this point many of you are thinking “and this is bad, how?”)

So this is fairly existential for America. Its ability to bully everyone is about to be reduced significantly for ten to twenty years, by which time all its enemies will be well supplied by the Chinese and Russians with weapons more advanced than American ones.

Use it or lose it. I suspect this may be part of the reasoning (by the few parts of American government capable of reasoning) around attacking Venezuela, for example.

But the reason that America officials are freaking out about the rare earth ban is it really does matter. That America and the West let themselves get into the position is insane, people (including me) were pointing out this vulnerability twenty years ago. But if there’s one thing the West can’t do any more it’s definitely think beyond three months or “but China’s rare earths are cheaper, so we can’t do anything!!!!!”

Assuming a war can be avoided, the best outcome here (but bad for most citizens of the West because there are a lot of civilian rare earth applications) is for China to just leave the restrictions on permanently.

Oh, and as a ray of sunshine. If the US can’t supply Israel with weapons and if Russia and China won’t, well… More on that later.

China’s finally flexing its muscles. It spent the last eight years, ever since Trump’s absolutely crazed and stupid Huawei sanctions, making sure it has all the trump cards and no significant vulnerabilities.

And it had done so. Goodbye (not) Pax Americana.

 

Hegseth’s Speech and Fitness Standards For Soldiers

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On October 2, 2025

34 Comments

I took the time to read a transcript of Secretary of War Hegseth’s speech to the gathered generals and admirals. To my surprise, I agreed with a lot of it, though not all. The crazy bits, especially combined with Trump’s statements, are the talk of domestic enemies and using the military against them.

But most of the speech is about standards. No beards, no slobs, and most of all, fitness standards:

Because war does not care if you’re a man or a woman. Neither does the enemy, nor does the weight of your rucksack, the size of an artillery round or the body weight of a casualty on the battlefield who must be carried. This — and I want to be very clear about this. This is not about preventing women from serving. We very much value the impact of female troops. Our female officers and NCOs are the absolute best in the world.

But when it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender-neutral. If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it. That is not the intent, but it could be the result. So be it. It will also mean that weak men won’t qualify because we’re not playing games. This is combat. This is life or death.

And the thing is, I more or less agree with this.

But. (You knew there’d be a but.)

What fitness standards are really required?


The only major army, at war, to use a lot of women was the USSR. They weren’t allowed in all roles, but they were in some. Particularly famous were the snipers:

Roza was one of more than 2,000 female snipers trained and employed by the Soviets to put fear in the hearts of the invaders by striking thousands from the Germans’ “rations list.” Other women were even more deadly and more famous. Lyudmila Pavlichenko, for example, had 309 confirmed kills and was selected to go on a wartime goodwill tour of Allied countries that included a visit to Franklin Roosevelt’s White House.

The initial female snipers were individuals like Nina Petrova, who served as a nurse on the front, although she had been a physical education instructor who had trained marksmen before the war. At first, the Soviets had been reluctant to employ her as a sniper because of her sex and the fact that she was 48 years old.

But the nurse was persistent, got her hands on a sniper rifle, and eventually was given permission to “go hunting” in her free time. As her official kill tally mounted, she gained the go-ahead for further outings, and she began to teach frontline sniper courses.

Other units also set up similar frontline programs, and in March 1942, a Central School for Sniper Instructors was established in Veshnyaki near Moscow. Petrova, Pavlichenko, and other women on the front lines had already demonstrated their abilities and coolness under fire, so it was a fairly logical follow-through when the Soviet high command established a separate three-month-long women’s training program there in December 1942.

The Soviets thought that women made excellent snipers because they could handle cold better than men, and they were more patient and willing to wait for the right opportunities. The confirmed kill numbers on many of them were very high, in the hundreds, and there’s little question that unconfirmed kills were much higher.

That and other “decamping” events to the front lines led to further sanctions and an angry fit when a political commander refused to let her go on additional excursions. She was an adrenaline junkie who begged to go back on the front lines. “Some force draws me to the front lines,” she wrote. “I’m bored in the back. Some people say I just want to get back to the boys, but I don’t have anyone I know there. I want to see real war.”

In one frontline attack alone, Roza reportedly killed 54 Germans and captured three others. Those figures were not included in her official sniper tally but resulted in a front-page feature in a Moscow magazine. Her action prompted Soviet writer-propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg to “thank her 57 times over. She has saved the lives of thousands of Soviet people.”

I don’t have a strong view on this. I just suspect that there’s a sort of generalized misogyny at the heart of the MAGA movement, a resentment of women who “took our jobs” that will lead to the standards not actually reflecting the requirements of the field. Hell, I’m not even a fan of women in war (some latent chivalry from my upbringing, I suspect.)

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The snipers carried two grenades. One was to be used against the enemy, the second to avoid capture by killing themselves and hopefully taking some Germans with them. If captured they could expect rape and torture. (Many looted a German pistol and saved the last bullet for themselves instead.)

That said, fairness requires that those who can do the job and want to, be allowed to. The only thing that matters in war is if you can do what needs to be done. How many air force technicians are going to be separated because they’re a bit too fat, say? Does it really matter if they are? With widespread recruitment issues, can you replace them? The US military letting in more women and so on wasn’t just about “woke” it was about fairly consistent problems meeting recruitment goals with people who weren’t criminals or morons or who have serious health issues. Is it better to have American women serving, or to offer non-citizens a route to citizenship in exchange for service? (Hire mercenaries, in effect?)

Not, of course, that the US military being high functioning is in almost anyone’s interest, including most Americans. After all, Trump has deployed troops against Americans and wants to deploy more, against his domestic enemies. Nor has America been “the good guys” in many wars. America losing its wars, historically would have been good nine times out of ten. (Fortunately Americans have become better and better at losing wars.) Hell, America’s currently helping the Israelis commit genocide and a carrier task force is currently steaming thru the Med, perhaps to attack Iran again.

So perhaps Hegseth’s reforms will just make America’s military even crappier. Let’s hope so.

Care To Tell Me What Is Wrong With This Headline?

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On September 16, 2025

22 Comments

Screenshot

Link to article here. 

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