By Kautilya The Contemplator, Substack, 7/22/26

Following the renewal of clashes between the United States and Iran, numerous commentators are speculating that Washington may be compelled to permanently withdraw its military forces from the Middle East. After all, Iranian strikes have demonstrated that America’s network of sophisticated military bases is vulnerable to attack and significant degrading. Moreover, mainstream media reports have underscored how Iranian missile strikes have gained increasing precision and have bypassed air defenses. If this is the case, why continue exposing personnel and high-tech assets to the risk of continued destruction?

Some observers have described recent developments as the beginning of a broader process of “debasification”, which is understood as the gradual expulsion of American military forces from the Middle East through sustained Iranian strikes that steadily render US bases untenable. However, this argument confuses temporary force protection measures with strategic withdrawal and overlooks the broader geo-strategic logic that has sustained the US military presence in the region for decades.

Military bases are not any ordinary real estate that can be abandoned when they become exposed to attacks. They are instruments of geopolitical influence that are built over decades through alliances, logistics and political relationships. Great powers rarely surrender strategically valuable positions simply because the costs of defending them increase. They withdraw only when the strategic value of remaining falls below the cost of staying, or when they possess another equally effective means of protecting their interests.

As such, the reports of extensive destruction across US military installations by Iranian missiles and the relocation of sophisticated assets should not be confused with imminent strategic withdrawal. What matters is whether the political and military ecosystem that supports the American presence remains intact.

The Middle East Remains Strategically Indispensable

The Middle East remains strategically important. It comprises two of the world’s major chokepoints – the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandeb – through which a substantial portion of global energy exports and international trade passes.

America’s network of military bases provides a permanent forward presence from which it can project power, gather intelligence, sustain military operations, influence regional political outcomes and preserve its position as the predominant external power in the region. These installations also complicate the strategic ambitions of rival powers, including China and Russia, whose growing economic and diplomatic presence could evolve into a more substantial security role over time if the United States were to relinquish its own.

From the prism of grand strategy, these bases preserve American influence across one of the world’s most strategically consequential regions. As long as Washington continues to regard those objectives as vital, increasing military vulnerability alone is unlikely to outweigh the perceived benefits of remaining.

Strategic Real Estate Cannot be Easily Replaced

America’s Middle East bases represent some of the most valuable real estate in the world. Installations such as Al Udeid in Qatar, the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and facilities in Kuwait, Jordan and the UAE function as regional command centers, intelligence hubs, logistics networks and lunching points for operations stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.

The US has spent 30-50 years building an integrated military ecosystem in the region involving decades of institutional development, political relationships and heavy financial investment. As such, those bases cannot simply be relinquished. Losing them would require rebuilding an equivalent network elsewhere, assuming regional governments were even willing to host it.

Power Vacuums Seldom Remain Empty

Avoiding the creation of a power vacuum is another reason why the United States, as like other great powers, would not withdraw voluntarily. The critical question remains as to who would shape the regional structure that would follow if American forces withdrew? Iran and Russia could expand their influence across the region. China, which is already the largest trading partner of many Gulf states, would likely increase its security presence to protect its commercial interests. Turkiye might also seek an expanded role.

In the past, when a great power has withdrawn from a geography, another has usually filled the vacuum. British withdrawal east of Suez in 1956, the Soviet collapse in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the American withdrawal from Iraq all produced new competitions for influence rather than lasting stability. As such, from Washington’s perspective, withdrawing from the Middle East would amount to surrendering one of the world’s most strategically significant regions to rival powers.

Adaptation, Not Withdrawal, Has Consistently Been the Preferred Option

Great powers generally respond to new military threats by adapting rather than withdrawing. Pearl Harbor in 1941 demonstrated that a US naval base could face significant destruction. However, the US did not abandon it. Instead, it rebuilt and expanded the base, dispersed naval assets and developed layered warning systems. Today, Pearl Harbor continues to remain one of the most important American military bases in the Pacific region. Furthermore, during the 1970s, Soviet SS-20 intermediate range missiles made NATO air bases across Europe increasingly vulnerable. NATO responded to the missile deployments by dispersing its air assets, investing in air defenses and hardening shelters.

Redeployments of key assets to Israel or Europe should thus be understood primarily as force protection measures rather than evidence of impending strategic retreat. Washington has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to modify its military posture without relinquishing its broader geopolitical objectives.

Factors That May Compel an American Withdrawal

There are several possibilities that in some combination could force the United States to relinquish its strategic position in the Middle East.

Destruction Outpaces US Speed of Repair

Iran would need to make the bases operationally unusable. Occasional missile strikes increase costs but do not eliminate military utility. Permanent withdrawal would require Iran to repeatedly destroy runways, fuel depots, command facilities and logistics networks faster than the United States could repair, reinforce or resupply them. While mainstream media has reported significant destruction at these bases from Iranian attacks, there is no public evidence yet that the scale of destruction has outweighed the capacity to repair and resupply.

Internal Political Shift and External Pressures

Washington itself would have to undergo a fundamental political realignment and determine that maintaining permanent combat forces in the Middle East no longer serves US interests. While such a shift could come about due to a re-assessment of geo-strategic priorities such as completing the pivot to the Asia Pacific region, other factors could accelerate this shift. These could be a confluence of pressures in the form of rising casualties among American service members, war fatigue, ballooning financial costs and doubts on the long-term benefits of continued confrontation.

Host Governments Revoke Access

Revoking access to the bases by Gulf countries in a coordinated manner would fundamentally alter the US position. A precedent already exists in Africa where Chad, Mali and Burkina Faso revoked French military access to their bases. Similarly, in those countries with a US military presence, those installations are not owned by the US and their continued operation depends on agreements with the host governments. Iran’s targeting of infrastructure in the Gulf states is to some extent intended to put pressure on those governments to move towards that decision.

Defeat in a Wider Regional War

A possible defeat in a regional war may decisively compel the Trump administration to withdraw, though any such strategic retreat would be cloaked in the language of victory. Iranian attacks against military and infrastructure targets across the Middle East as well as the imposition of a naval blockade by the Houthis on Saudi ports all point to an escalation to a wider conflict.

While Iran continues to maintain escalation dominance and expanding the war plays to its advantage, achieving a strategic victory would require interdicting American reinforcements and supply, maintaining a sustained tempo of attacks across multiple countries, undermining Gulf country cooperation and effectively breaking the alliance structure that underpins American power. This would represent a far higher threshold than striking individual bases.

The Conditions for a Permanent Withdrawal Have Not Been Met

As the conflict increasingly focuses on control of the Strait of Hormuz and enters a cycle of flare-ups, ceasefires and political theater, the more likely outcome is an evolution in military posture rather than a surrender of America’s strategic position.

While Iran has clearly increased the risks of a continued US presence in the region, it has not been able to dismantle the political, economic and military foundations that underpin American power. After all, vulnerability alone has seldom caused great powers to abandon regions they consider strategically indispensable. As long as the strategic and political ecosystem sustaining the US military presence persists, redeployments should be understood as temporary force protection measures, not the beginning of America’s permanent departure from the Middle East.

Kautilya The Contemplator is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I will always be grateful for your support.

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 8/13/26

The West’s spree of “shadow fleet” seizures might finally be coming to an end after what Putin just told his Pacific Fleet commanders during his visit to the Russian Far East. As he phrased it, “We can see that the officials of some countries are attempting to restrict the movement of our economic operators’ vessels by peaceful means in violation of International Maritime Law, but recently it occurred to them that they can seize our vessels and sell our looted property. This is nothing short of piracy and plunder.”

He then threatened that, “If this happens, we will have to reciprocate – not necessarily in the waters where they plan to raid our own ships but anywhere we consider necessary or reasonable, including in the Pacific Fleet’s area of responsibility.” Pacific Fleet Commander Adm. Viktor Liina told Putin during his turn to speak that “Between April 24 and August 6, 2026, a total of 1,001 vessels transited the exclusive economic zone of the Russian Federation along the islands of the South Kuril chain alone.”

He added that “Of these, 379 sailed under the flags of unfriendly states, including 273 bulk carriers and 71 tankers, among which were 26 vessels from the United Kingdom and 9 from France. Simultaneously, Western states are actively enlisting vessels flying the flags of third countries to transport cargo in their interests. In essence, this constitutes their own shadow fleet. We possess the necessary forces to inspect and detain vessels belonging to unfriendly states and their shadow fleet”.

Putin’s threatened tit-for-tat seizures of foreign vessels came half a year after his senior aide Nikolai Patrushev told local media that “If we don’t respond firmly, the British, French, and even the Baltic states will soon become so brazen that they will attempt to completely block our country’s access to the seas”. The Chairman of the Maritime Board then suggested “permanently stationing significant forces in key maritime routes, including in regions remote from Russia, ready to cool the ardor of Western corsairs.”

In retrospect, ever-cautious Putin gave the West the chance to stop its policy of seizing Russia’s “shadow fleet” vessels so as to avoid any reciprocal escalation that could accidentally risk sparking World War III, but this was misinterpreted by them as weakness and only emboldened them. Likewise, the same can be said about Russia holding back on its late-May threat to carry out “systematic strikes” against Ukraine, in response to which Ukraine launched a Western-backed “war of attrition” against Russia.

The self-evident existential stakes of eschewing any reciprocal escalation as Ukraine systematically attempted to deindustrialize and demilitarize Russia with Western support finally convinced Putin to mildly “escalate to de-escalate” in Kharkov and Odessa Regions. This represented the first time that he’s consistently done so since the special operation began, which then arguably emboldened him to now seriously consider doing the same at sea in response to any future seizure of his “shadow fleet” vessels.

To be clear, Putin conditioned Russia’s tit-for-tat seizure of foreign vessels on being “anywhere we consider necessary or reasonable”, so it’s possible that Western vessels will avoid Russian waters and take care to also avoid the Russian Navy wherever they may be in the world. This means that tit-for-tat seizures shouldn’t be taken for granted despite his threat, but the significance rests in Putin once again “escalating to de-escalate” in a bid to restore deterrence, which he had hitherto been reluctant to do.

By The Grayzone & Kit Klarenberg, The Grayzone, 7/26/26

One has to ask: Why are knuckleheads like this allowed to have access to the highest echelons of power in the UK? And why are they taken seriously at all? – Natylie

Leaks reveal failed journalist Paul Mason secretly advised ex-Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his Defence Secretary and now-Chancellor John Healey, and top aides on important security matters.

Mason’s belligerent pronouncements on the need for Britain to “deter” Russia through a massive military build-up influenced Labour’s policies and rhetoric.

Mason was secretly working with notorious British military intelligence operative Chris Donnelly to turn Labour toward a hardline position on Russia and defense spending.

Since the Ukraine proxy war erupted, Donnelly has secretly guided London on escalation strategies, including attacks on Kerch Bridge, and the creation of Gladio-style terrorist armies in Ukraine.

All along, he and Mason have fed lines to Healey and other Labour frontbenchers on the conflict, while advising how Britain should respond to political and military developments, even authoring key speeches for Healey.

Healey has consistently pushed for Britain to prime itself for direct conflict with Russia, even resigning over Starmer’s supposed refusal to increase defense spending. Leaked emails indicate these positions were influenced by Mason and Donnelly’s covert influence. As Chancellor, Healey can now fund their apocalyptic vision.

John Healey, whose dramatic June 11 resignation as Britain’s Defence Secretary precipitated Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s fall, has returned to government as Chancellor under newly-anointed premier Andy Burnham.

Healey’s departure was triggered by Starmer and his administration being “unable” and “unwilling” to “commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country,” making Britain “less safe.” This followed four years in opposition, then two in government pushing for more militaristic stances on Russia, and demanding ramped up state spending on defense. As Chancellor, Healey now has the chance to fund Britain’s military to the hilt at the expense of the country’s already hollowed-out social sector.

Leaked emails reviewed by The Grayzone reveal how Healey’s militaristic stances on Russia were secretly influenced by a brain trust consisting of the former celebrity leftist and failed journalist Paul Mason, and the scandal-stained British intelligence veteran Chris Donnelly.

See the leaked email communications between Paul Mason, Chris Donnelly, John Healey and other advisors here.

Mason and Donnelly exploited their high-level access to Healey to foment wider support within the Labour party, and Starmer’s government, for the most aggressive policies possible on the Ukraine conflict. Along the way, Donnelly consistently advised Healey to support dangerously escalatory actions, arguing if Moscow was provoked as a result, then “so be it.”

Donnelly is most notorious as the founder of the Integrity Initiative, a covert information warfare network spanning Europe, encompassing networks of pro-war influencers and journalists, and dedicated to the mission of flooding Western media with anti-Russian propaganda.

For his part, the self-described “antifascist” Mason now cools his heels at a NATO-funded think tank after burning out as a maverick lefty correspondent for Channel 4 and the BBC. Mason’s public image as a celebrity leftist imploded after The Grayzone exposed him as a security state collaborator who covertly pitched the UK government on his own Integrity Initiative-style propaganda network, while furnishing British officials with a bizarre “mind-map” of the antiwar left containing targets he sought to neutralize. Those targets included this publication, which Mason plotted to sue for our factual reporting on his machinations.

Emails reviewed by The Grayzone show both figures were in continuous contact with Healey from 2021 onwards, providing him with advice on how to escalate conflict with Russia and increase the defense budget, while angling for plum appointments as national security advisors.

Advising Healey to ignore “alarmist” talk of nuclear war

In his resignation letter, Healey took aim at Starmer’s “defence investment plan,” declaring it to be “well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time.” He stated it was “imperative” to “speed up the readiness” of Britain’s military to fight within two years, to be prepared to wage all-out war on Russia by 2030. Healey is now ideally placed as Chancellor to finance these objectives, when London is already committedly on the warpath.

Five days before Burnham took office, it was announced the British government would soon encourage citizens to “stockpile food, water and medicine to prepare for war.” A countrywide “national campaign to get the country ready for conflict will also include a multi-day crisis response exercise next year.”

The campaign seemed to embrace advice Donnelley had been providing to Healey since April 2022, when he emphasized the “urgency” of “moving to the kind of wartime footing needed to prosecute” the Ukraine proxy conflict “successfully.” In those exchanges with Healey, Donnelly demanded “a big rethink” by the British government “on spending, forces, posture, readiness.”

At the same time, as The Grayzone first revealed, he was secretly furnishing the Ministry of Defence with blueprints for a campaign of state terror against Russia for the Ministry of Defence. These included a plan to bomb the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian mainland – a proposal that was executed by Ukrainian intelligence operatives on October 2022. Donnelly’s long-held fantasies of exploiting Ukraine as a beachhead for a Western-wide war on Russia are now a reality.

As the conflict broadens, threatening to involve new NATO partner states, Donnelly believes there is nothing to fear. In fact, he used Healey as his channel for encouraging the Labour Party to adopt his escalatory master plan.

Around the time when Donnelly’s Kerch Bridge plot was being executed, he was secretly counseling Healey and Labour to avoid “alarmist” public discussions about nuclear war, for fear such careless talk could “stop our support of Ukraine.”

Donnelly’s covert role as counselor of Labour’s most influential defense officials appears to have brought Britain closer to the brink of direct conflict with Russia. Exposing the private discussions that led the country to this perilous point is clearly in the public interest.

Healey recruits Mason and Donnelly to get tough on Russia

In August 2021, the UK Spectator’s gossip columnist revealed that Paul Mason was providing private consultancy services to Healey. The leaked emails seen by The Grayzone now demonstrate that Mason’s influence on Healey went much deeper, revealing that the former celebrity leftist gained access to Healey’s key advisors, defense and foreign policy apparatchiks close to Starmer, and Starmer himself, first while in opposition, then in government.

In fact, Mason had been privately contracted in January 2021 by Healey to help build the “core narratives” of Labour’s defense policy.

This included constructing detailed positions on NATO, the “Russia threat”, industrial strategy, embedding the military “further into civil society,” Britain’s nuclear deterrent, “special relationship” with the US, and the ever-crucial question of defense spending. Mason’s outputs included a “speech, three articles and core Labour narratives for external/internal use” to be delivered within weeks. The impact on Labour’s rhetoric and policies on military and war matters was immediate.

In early February 2021, Healey delivered a controversial, Mason-influenced speech in which he implicitly attacked Corbyn’s personal opposition to NATO membership and nuclear weapons, declaring Labour’s commitment to both “unshakeable”. Over prior weeks, Mason had forwarded a number of briefings and speech drafts to Healey, directly channelling Chris Donnelly’s thinking and rhetoric. Eerily foreshadowing Healey’s grounds for resigning as Defence Minister, these materials called for investing significantly in London’s ability to “deter” Russia, and “[taking] seriously the expansion of Britain’s defence industrial capacity.”

Mason advocated Healey conduct “briefings and engagement with Labour MPs, think tanks and influencers,” to “create a ‘script’ from which” Labour’s defense messaging would emerge. However, Healey’s comments rankled Labour’s remaining Corbynite lawmakers. Kim Johnson MP formally emailed him saying she was a “little concerned” the party had apparently “shifted position” on NATO and nukes “without any debate or discussion” with parliamentarians. “Do you have any plans to communicate with MP’s/Lords[?]” she enquired.

Healey forwarded her email to Mason, who dismissed Johnson’s suggestions Labour had “shifted position.” He argued Healey’s comments simply reflected how “we are shutting down the possibility” Labour could support unilateral disarmament, or go “anti-NATO”. Mason was avowedly “keen to have this argument out overtly” with opponents of nuclear weapons. He also provided “confidential” feedback from Donnelly, who praised Healey’s “really excellent” speech. “There is a lot here I can help on,” Donnelly wrote, including “acquisition,” and the necessity of “culture change” within Britain’s military.

Donnelly encourages ‘so be it’ attitude on provoking nuclear war

Mason concluded by telling Healey, “I want to set up a meeting with me, you and [Donnelly],” which the Shadow Defence Secretary said he’d “very much like.” After a personal rendezvous brokered by Mason, Donnelly began regularly sending briefings and papers to Healey through private channels, often circumventing his formal advisors. His deranged prescriptions were particularly pronounced in a January 2022 exchange with Healey, inspired by then-Defence Secretary Ben Wallace indicating Britain “would be open to supplying further ‘defensive’ weaponry” to Kiev.

At this time, the drums of proxy war were beating with growing intensity in Donbass, where Kiev was preparing an offensive against the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Healey personally requested Donnelly’s “advice on what sort of weapons or systems might be considered or requested” for Ukraine, given Wallace’s comments. Donnelly bluntly declared, “what Ukraine needs most of all is long-range strike” capability.

But in a rare display of prudence, the Shadow Defense Secretary pushed back on his secret advisor’s proposal. Healey noted that supplying Kiev with long-range missiles would represent “a big policy change” and “provocation to Putin.” He observed how the “long-term security risk” of Ukraine possessing and developing such offensive weaponry was the “primary problem for Russia.” Healey angsted, “if diplomatic route does not deliver then Putin only has military options, and may consider the costs of inaction now would be greater than the costs of military escalation.”

Donnelly dismissed Healey’s concerns about provoking Russia into a wider war. He suggested Putin was actually unconcerned by “military issues,” and “the real threat [to Russia] is Ukraine choosing to become a Western-style liberal democracy.” Donnelly insisted that Moscow’s resistance to NATO simply stemmed from the prospect of Kiev “being free to choose a different path.” This was supposedly “the most likely thing to cause spontaneous popular uprising” against the Kremlin, hence Putin’s NATO worries.

Donnelly then thundered for providing Ukraine with long-range missiles, consequences be demanded. “If that is provocation, so be it,” he proclaimed.

By October 2022, with the proxy war against Russia in full swing, a Healey aide fretted about the possibility of a nuclear exchange. He solicited Donnelly’s “thoughts on what Labour should say publicly about the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons by Putin,” and what the party’s “talking points should be” on the matter.

Donnelly responded by cautioning against discussing nuclear war “in an alarmist way,” as this could “intimidate the West into capitulating” and “stop our support of Ukraine.” He claimed NATO would simply “destroy Russian forces in Ukraine with conventional weapons,” thus averting nuclear war altogether.

Mason: Gen Z ‘will fight’ Russia, through conscription if necessary

By January 2024, Russia and Ukraine were still locked a full-blown war, hundreds of thousands of men were dead, and Mason was still on the line with Donnelly, plotting an even greater escalation.

In an email exchange with Donnelly, the faded journalist declared that “in confidence,” he was “hoping to work for John Healey soon,” now in a formal capacity. Mason cautioned, however, that “I have to be careful what I say in public from now on if I become [Healey’s] adviser.”

Behind-the-scenes, Mason was spinning out unhinged proposals to precipitate a “big expansion” in Britain’s military reserves. This included “recruiting tech nerds and putting them at or close to the front line,” to boost London’s drone and electronic warfare capabilities.

Ever the social justice warrior, Mason was also preoccupied with compelling more women to pursue technology and science degrees, preparing them for “defence and nuclear jobs.” Among his bold ideas was creating “new kinds of units” within the British Army, such as “Women only artillery? Muslim-only units?”

While Mason’s ideas ran the gamut of half-baked liberal interventionist ploys, he “firmly” believed Gen Z “will fight” in a future war with Russia. And he was just the man to make military service cool again. “Motivating them is a big cultural challenge and something I want to focus on” with Healey, Mason mused.

But if jumping the trenches in a potentially apocalyptic land war against Russia did not appeal to the sensibilities of extremely online Gen Z’ers – who state in large numbers that they would never fight for their country – they would have to be press ganged into service.

“I am in favour of a big expansion in [British Army] reserves and a cultural change to make it happen – with conscription as a last option,” Mason explained.

He added that the prospect of working directly alongside then-Defence Secretary Healey was fueling his repeated failed attempts to enter parliament. However, Mason didn’t give much to his chances, as “Labour are very factional and I’m in the wrong faction.” In response, Donnelly said it would be “wonderful” if Mason worked for Healey, “even more so” if he was the Defence Secretary’s parliamentary private secretary, as an MP, because “we definitely need you in parliament.”

Two days later, Donnelly forwarded a “Guide to Leadership Change in Russia” to Healey. It was privately produced by his employer, shadowy intelligence cutout Earendel Associates. The firm has served as a front for Donnelly’s construction of secret Ukrainian terror armies. Its report outlined scenarios for removing Putin from power, including “decisive military reversal or defeat in Ukraine.” It dismissed any suggestion a palace coup in Moscow would produce “significant and lasting dysfunctionality of state institutions,” or the country’s outright “breakdown”.

In response, Healey gratefully praised the “really excellent paper.” He said its “well referenced” arguments for regime change in Russia needed “to be taken to the heart of UK (and especially US) leadership thinking.” Healey may have had an opportunity to personally do so subsequently.

On July 4, Labour was elected with a historic parliamentary majority. Within days, Healey and Starmer appeared at that year’s NATO summit, pledging Britain would be the “leading European nation” in the alliance, and Ukraine’s “most reliable ally.”

Britain ‘adapting as war requires’ at Donnelly’s demand

While the victory in London filled Mason and Donnelly with hope for expanding the Ukraine proxy war, subsequent developments in Washington threatened their ambitions.

On November 8 2024, a “depressed” Donnelly emailed Mason to commiserate over Donald Trump’s victory in the US Presidential election a night prior. He lamented that Trump, who had campaigned on a pledge to negotiate an immediate peace between Ukraine and Russia, will be out to change things in a big way,” potentially meaning “serious danger for Ukraine” and “a very big shake up for NATO.”

In response to Trump’s triumph, Donnelly suggested Britain’s national defence and security, including “industrial and procurement systems,” required “fundamental restructuring.” He enquired, “do you think anyone in government realises this?”

Mason responded, “I think John Healey does.”

He went on to complain that “Starmer does not have any political geostrategists in his team.”

Naturally, Mason saw an easy way to fix the problem. It entailed Starmer hiring him to guide the war effort.

“That’s something I could remedy if they would let me but they don’t,” he commented.

Mason said he was working with the Tony Blair-linked think tank Progressive Britain to build “a pro-defence/UK strategic interest lobby” among the Parliamentary Labour Party. They also founded a now-defunct outfit called Labour Friends of Ukraine to push for more spending on weapons.

Mason signed off, “what’s the three things I should push in face to face contacts with Labour?”

Donnelly was “very glad indeed” to learn Healey agreed with him that Britain’s national security required “fundamental restructuring.” Donnelly had “heard nothing from him since just after” the July general election. He went on to state, “the most important thing to get across” to Labour parliamentarians was how Britain’s “national governance system” is “dysfunctional”.

Until being “fixed” according to Donnelly’s specifications, he believed “the government will be unable to develop and implement the policies and strategy we need to face what’s coming.”

Deploying another series of buzzwords for massive increases in military spending, Donnelly called for “fundamental reform” of all Britain’s military structures, including commissioning and industry, to make them “permanently adaptable” as “war absolutely requires.” Donnelly warned any increased defense spending would be wasted without these reforms in place, “and we will be completely screwed.”

Healey’s resignation as Defence Minister and reassignment to the Chancellor of the Exchequer under a new Labour administration appear to have secured one the key goals which Donnelly and Mason have lobbied for behind the scenes.

The war will go on. And if it turns nuclear, then “so be it.”

By George Beebe, Responsible Statecraft, 8/1/26

George Beebe is the Director of Grand Strategy for the Quincy Institute. He spent more than two decades in government as an intelligence analyst, diplomat, and policy advisor, including as director of the CIA’s Russia analysis and as a staff advisor on Russia matters to Vice President Cheney. He is the author of “The Russia Trap: How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe” (2019).

Over the course of a few short weeks, a grim new reality has taken shape in Ukraine.

Russia has shown that it need not conquer and occupy Ukraine’s entire Black Sea coastline to turn that country into the equivalent of a landlocked state. It need only deny access to Ukraine’s critically important Odessa port complex, something it is doing quite effectively through air and missile strikes on port facilities and approaching ships.

That reality will probably not amount to a knock-out blow in the ongoing war. But it is likely to have a profound impact on Ukraine’s already gloomy post-war prospects — and, by extension, on the contours of a new European security landscape in the current conflict’s aftermath.

Only a handful of months ago, Russia was conducting few military operations against Odessa. Early in the war, attacks by Russia and Ukraine on merchant shipping in the Black Sea had threatened to choke off agricultural exports vital to world markets. Under pressure from India and other key partners in the Global South, Moscow agreed to the so-called “Grain Deal” with Ukraine, brokered by Turkey and the United Nations, to allow unimpeded commercial exports from the region.

For some four years thereafter, the Odessa port system remained open to Ukrainian imports and exports, handling some 90% of Ukraine’s agricultural trade. Russian hardliners bristled at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s refusal to attack Ukraine’s vital but vulnerable port, grumbling that Putin seemed more interested in avoiding rifts with Global South states than defeating Ukraine.

Several factors have combined to change this picture. One was the evident failure of the West’s campaign to turn Russia into a pariah state, a brainchild of the Biden administration that had magnified the importance of the Global South to Moscow as a means of avoiding international isolation. A second has been the depletion of Ukrainian air defense interceptors, which has left Odessa largely defenseless against Russian ballistic missiles and allowed bomb-carrying aircraft to operate in closer proximity to the port complex, increasing the accuracy and destructiveness of Russian air strikes.

Ironically enough, perhaps the most important factor was Ukraine’s own “40-day influence campaign” announced in late June, which included long- and medium-range drone strikes on energy infrastructure in Russia and merchant shipping in the Sea of Azov. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the campaign was aimed at “influencing the aggressor state in order to compel it to end the war.” President Trump described it more plainly as an “escalation that we hope will lead to peace.”

In practice, however, the escalation allowed Russia to deflect Global South criticism for violating terms of the Grain Deal by arguing it was Ukraine that had kicked off the recent cycle of shipping and port attacks.

The near-term effects have been disturbingly clear. Since July 22, the Russian military has effectively closed the Ukrainian port complex in and around Odessa to all shipping. The loss of its remaining deep-water ports is already having a devastating effect on Ukraine’s agricultural exports — the backbone of its economy — which officials warn may plummet by 50% in the coming months because alternative land, rail, and river routes have much less capacity and are much more costly.

The damage to Ukraine’s economy probably will be manageable in the near term so long as Europe steps up its flow of aid. But the impact of Odessa’s closure on Ukraine’s post-war prospects may prove to be much more profound.

It has long been assumed in both Washington and Europe that the main alternative to a compromise settlement of the Russia-Ukraine war is the transformation of Ukraine into a “steel porcupine.” The concept envisions a heavily armed and fortified Ukraine that can serve as a barrier to further Russian aggression and allow the hot war to settle into a stable, frozen conflict.

Proponents of this vision dismiss prospective “land for peace” deals with Moscow and oppose any quantitative or qualitative limitations on Ukraine’s military — points that Russian officials say are essential to any peace deal — arguing that such concessions would “reward Russian aggression” and prevent Ukraine from becoming an Eastern European variant of Israel, a “Major Non-NATO Ally” that punches well above its weight-class in regional affairs and serves as a keystone of broader European defense plans.

However, if Russia can use air and missile attacks to deny Ukraine the use of its port facilities, it can also prevent Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction and economic revitalization. Just as merchant ships will not risk Russian attacks to enter Odessa, construction firms are unlikely to risk Russian airstrikes in attempting to build or repair bridges, roads, factories, ports, and other vital infrastructure. Nor will investors risk hundreds of billions of dollars if Russian missiles and bombs can destroy any Ukrainian reconstruction project in a matter of hours.

Without large-scale economic reconstruction and the jobs and stability that would follow, few of the millions of Ukrainians who fled the war (most for Europe but many for Russia) will return. Absent mass repatriation, Ukraine is likely to enter a demographic death-spiral. By Ukrainian officials’ own admission, a population that approached 52 million people when the Soviet Union broke up now stands at between 22 and 25 million people, and nearly half of them are retirees.

According to one estimate, Ukraine’s working age population – the backbone of both its civilian economy and its military — could lose an additional third by 2040. The number of children, the embodiment of Ukraine’s future, could decline to half its pre-war level.

This raises an obvious but under-discussed question: How can an aging and dying Ukrainian population, lacking a strong economic base, serve as a “new Sparta” countering a nuclear-armed Russia that is seven times its size?

The closure of Odessa should highlight two salient points for Western leaders. First, neither Ukraine nor the West can eliminate the threat of Russian air and missile strikes through military means alone. Second, Russia will have strong reason to continue them, even after it eventually halts large-scale ground operations, if the Kremlin worries that the West will otherwise turn Ukraine into a safe haven for threatening Russian security.

As a result, the alternative to an uncomfortable compromise settlement of the war will not be a steel Ukrainian porcupine. It will be a weak and dysfunctional rump state that ill-serves Ukrainians and undermines Europe’s broader security.

Interesting in-depth interview.

YouTube link here.