Christopher Caldwell for The New York Times thinks the American Empire has met its match in the Persian Gulf when it already met it a year ago in the Red Sea

... the United States lacks the military means to impose its will on Iran in a long conflict. In 1991 a million soldiers from more than 40 countries were needed to reverse the invasion of Kuwait carried out by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a country less sophisticated than Iran and a fraction of its size. When Iran and Iraq fought each other to a standstill in the 1980s, deaths ran into the hundreds of thousands on each side. The United States would have to send a significant portion of its armed forces — which total only 1.3 million troops — to stand a chance of subduing Iran, and that force, if successful, would have to stay for a long time. ...

Here.

Caldwell is just as blind as Trump.

Neither one gets it that the lowly Houthis already beat us to a draw last year in the Red Sea.

Nothing is moving out of the Persian Gulf today, and tanker traffic through the Red Sea is less than half what it used to be in 2022, even under the new conditions of a world desperately thirsty for the Middle East oil no longer coming out of the former.

And neither one gets it that you can't have an American Empire without paying for it. 

We're $39 trillion in debt and can no longer impose our will in the world's vital choke-points because elites have pretended since Reagan that low marginal income tax rates are sufficient to maintain American Empire when what those rates have done is impoverish us and enrich our adversaries.

1,135 billionaires are the symbol of our lost empire. 

Caldwell steers well clear of naming the obvious remedy, and Trump's Big Ugly Bill will  do nothing but put America $62 trillion in debt by the end of 2032.

Taxes must be raised . . . a lot.

Ronald Reagan's goal of a 600-ship U.S. Navy made it to 594 in 1987, but in 2026 we can barely deploy 300 because of Bill Clinton, but Trumpty Dumpty never mentions that

 

 After the end of the U.S.S.R. in 1991, Bill Clinton gutted the Navy.

We went from 541 ships in 1992 to 336 by 1999.

And now we can't stop the Houthis in the Red Sea, nor Iran in the Persian Gulf. 

In other words, this would mean Trump is going to cut and run from the Persian Gulf just like he cut and ran from the Red Sea on May 6, 2025

 Trump Tells Aides He’s Willing to End War Without Reopening Hormuz: Administration officials assess that forcing the waterway back open would mean extending the military mission

WASHINGTON—President Trump told aides he’s willing to end the U.S. military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, administration officials said, likely extending Tehran’s firm grip on the waterway and leaving a complex operation to reopen it for a later date.

In recent days, Trump and his aides assessed that a mission to pry open the chokepoint would push the conflict beyond his timeline of four to six weeks. He decided that the U.S. should achieve its main goals of hobbling Iran’s navy and its missile stocks and wind down current hostilities while pressuring Tehran diplomatically to resume the free flow of trade. If that fails, Washington would press allies in Europe and the Gulf to take the lead on reopening the strait, the officials said. ...

 

Donald Trump . . .

 

The Houthis have joined Iran by restarting hostilities against Israel

Trump couldn't finish the Houthis off last year, and now they come back to bite.

Oil tankers filling at Saudi Arabia's Yanbu port in the Red Sea because it was too dangerous in the Persian Gulf may soon have nowhere to fill.

All because Donald Trump has been mistaken twice in the Middle East.

The energy crisis will soon be a global energy catastrophe, leading to an inflation catastrophe, leading to an economic catastrophe. And maybe a world war.

 

 

The Trump administration learned nothing from its fight to a draw with the Houthis last year

... Iran is still believed to have a vast stockpile of mines, cruise missiles on trucks and hundreds of undamaged boats in hidden facilities with deeply dug tunnels along the coast and on islands, said Farzin Nadimi, an expert on Iranian defenses at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“I think it will take weeks to reach a point where there can be safe operations in the strait,” he said. “Even then, a lot of the Iranian assets will survive.” ...

Houthi militants in Yemen, who are aligned with Iran, waged a two-month campaign last year with missiles, drones and unmanned boats against international shipping that parallels Iran’s closure of the strait. The U.S. struck more than 1,000 targets in Yemen, but never succeeded in halting Houthi attacks fully until the two sides declared a truce in May. ...

More. 

The 2024 pro-peace ticket shunned Ukraine like the plague and promptly launched strikes in seven other nations

 

Net tons through the Suez Canal in 2025 came to 0.52 billion vs. 1.41 billion in 2022, down 63%

 Trump's 7-week Operation Rough Rider against the Houthis was a total, and expensive, failure, compounding Biden's.

The pirates and terrorists won in the Red Sea.

... The first month alone of Trump’s bombing campaign cost more than $1 billion in weapons and munitions. ... 

 

 

 

George W. Bush crossed the Rubicon of American Imperial pre-emptive first strikes in 2003 in Iraq but it was hotly debated in 2002, now we hardly bat an eye when Trump does it

Government of the Uniparty, by the Uniparty, and for the Uniparty.

Trump fancies that he's different from George W. Bush, but he's the same guy. 

Flashback: July 1, 2002 

Striking First: President Bush's Preemptive Strike Policy

... We can't have one kind of law for the rest of the world that we impose on the rest of the world and an imperial law, if you will, a law of empire, that applies only to the United States. ... We were seeing the possibility of a new kind of law of empire where we would stand above the rest of the world, and the bottom line when we look at the question of attacking civilians, what happens when we're wrong? Like we were today in Afghanistan, where civilians died because of bad intelligence? ...

 

Trump has attacked the Houthis, Iran, and is assembling an armada against Venezuela as we speak, but fantasy world dweller Scott Greer says the future of the GOP isn't about foreign policy

The Old Guard Is Not the Right’s Future

  ... Republicans are less likely now to back NATO and other international commitments. Republicans are not as greatly concerned with foreign affairs as think tankers are. It was ranked near the bottom of issues that 2024 voters cared about. ... Obsessing over fiscal policy, advocating for more foreign interventions, and being willing to capitulate on immigration is not a winning formula either in the GOP primaries or for a general electorate. ... [David] French, unlike other Never Trumpers, has given up on the GOP entirely. He thinks it’s Trump’s party now and for the foreseeable future.

He’s obviously right. Only an America First candidate, not a Paul Ryan type, can hold the coalition together. ...

 

The alt-right fringe is now acceptable at The American Conservative, and in the line-up at Real Clear Politics, all of which have become completely incoherent, including on the primacy of fiscal policy, which is the cause of, and the solution to, all the ills now afflicting the young people Greer would speak for.

 

Reagan authored those ills, and Trump has double-downed on them.

 

The loser to the Houthis says Zelensky should surrender

 Trump Says Zelensky Has To Start "Accepting Things": "He's Losing"

Hegseth should never have been confirmed to SECDEF, Inspector General's report finds his use of Signal in March jeopardized troop safety against the Houthis

 Hegseth risked ‘potential harm to US pilots’ in using Signal to discuss strikes: Report

... “The Secretary sent nonpublic DoD information identifying the quantity and strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately 2 to 4 hours before the execution of those strikes,” the report states.

“Using a personal cell phone to conduct official business and send nonpublic DoD information through Signal risks potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DoD personnel and mission objectives.” ...

“Although the Secretary wrote in his July 25 statement to the DoD OIG that ‘there were no details that would endanger our troops or the mission,’ if this information had fallen into the hands of U.S. adversaries, Houthi forces might have been able to counter U.S. forces or reposition personnel and assets to avoid planned U.S. strikes,” the report concluded.

“Even though these events did not ultimately occur, the Secretary’s actions created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots.” ...

 

 

Straw Man Vance

 

Prioritizing Ukraine Over Your Own Country Is Bonkers

Vice President JD Vance, X

 

Hundreds of millions of dollars are presently being spent against Venezuela which hasn't attacked anybody, at least $5 billion was burned in the unsuccessful attempt to stop the Houthis in the Red Sea, Israel received close to $18 billion in help after 10/7, Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran alone cost several hundred million dollars, and DHS is going to burn through $170 billion over the next four years for immigration and border enforcement because of the Big Ugly Bill.

 

Recent Police State deployments of the National Guard to places like DC and LA have cost from $1-2 million per day.

 

America can do and does do many things at once, especially when it comes to spending money on "wars", whether foreign . . . or domestic. 

 

J. D. Vance is smart enough to know all that. He's just counting on fooling enough of the people who aren't. 

As Mad King Ludwig speeds a carrier strike group from the Med to the Caribbean, American failure to restore freedom of navigation in the Red Sea is highlighted by the latest Suez Canal navigation report for 3Q2025

 It's a picture of dismal failure.

The U.S. Navy has not made the Red Sea safe for free trade.

The Houthis remain a potent threat to shipping. 

3Q2025 statistics compared with 3Q2023 show the number of ships transiting the Suez Canal down 49.8%.

Net tons passing through is down 65.8%.

 

 

Trump couldn't defeat the Houthis in the Red Sea, now picks on someone his own size in what is both a phony and illegal Caribbean war, all because he needs a victory to save face

 Trump ‘Determined’ the U.S. Is Now in a War With Drug Cartels, Congress Is Told

 

...  In this case, the Trump administration is conflating the trafficking of an illicit consumer product and associated crime with an armed attack, asserting in the notice that cartels “illegally and directly cause the deaths of tens of thousands of American citizens each year.” But it has not explained how selling a dangerous substance constitutes a use of force, and Congress has not authorized the use of any type of military force against cartels. ...

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, accused Mr. Trump of deciding that he could wage “secret wars against anyone he calls an enemy.” The president “offered no credible legal justification, evidence or intelligence” for the strikes, Mr. Reed said.

“Drug cartels are despicable and must be dealt with by law enforcement,” he said. “But now, by the president’s own words, the U.S. military is engaged in armed conflict with undefined enemies he has unilaterally labeled ‘unlawful combatants,’ and he has deployed thousands of troops, ships and aircraft against them. Yet he has refused to inform Congress or the public.” ...

Uniparty Trump hides behind the skirts of the 2001 anti-terror legislation to murder so-called terrorists near Venezuela after cutting and running from the Houthis in the Red Sea

<insert tough guy image here>

MEXICO CITY — U.S. forces could have stopped the boat that officials say was carrying illegal drugs from Venezuela to the United States on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, but President Donald Trump chose instead to destroy it, killing 11 people on board, to send a deterrent message to traffickers. ...

The action was a dramatic escalation for the U.S. in its fight against drug traffickers. Lawmakers and legal analysts questioned the legality of launching a lethal strike against civilians in international waters outside of an armed conflict.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement that the strike was “conducted against the operations of a designated terrorist organization and was taken in defense of vital U.S. national interests and in the collective self-defense of other nations,” an apparent reference to the 2001 authorization for the use of military force enacted by Congress after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that year. It authorizes the use of force against the perpetrators of the al-Qaeda attacks and to prevent “future acts of international terrorism.” Various lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully for years to repeal the measure, including Vice President JD Vance, who as a senator in 2023 co-sponsored the End Endless Wars Act. ...

The U.S. Coast Guard sometimes shoots out the engines of go-fast boats during maritime interdictions, the former agent said, but killing the crew is new for the United States. ...

Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, said the strike violated international law. The U.S. is not in armed conflict with Venezuela or its criminal elements, she noted, which means it violated the suspects’ right to life. ...

Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the attack “murder.”

“We have been capturing civilians transporting drugs for decades without killing them,” Petro said. “Those who transport drugs are not the big drug lords, but very poor young people from the Caribbean and the Pacific. ...

 More. 

Donald Trump utterly failed to restore freedom of navigation through the Suez Canal: In 2Q2025 the number of ships passing through is down 55.2% and total net tons passing through is down 69.9% compared with 2Q2023

 

Compared to the first quarter of 2023, total ships passing through the Suez Canal is down 52.7% in 1Q2025, and total net tons passing through is down 68.4%

 Freedom of the seas not restored.

 

Traffic through the Suez Canal to and from the Red Sea remains down 60%, Egypt is losing billions of dollars on transits still rerouted around the southern tip of Africa

 The New York Times reports here:

... The cease-fire, which began May 6, ended a U.S. campaign that involved over 1,100 strikes against the Houthis in Yemen and became a source of embarrassment for the Trump administration after group chats about the strikes inadvertently became public. The Pentagon had planned on a monthslong bombardment, but President Trump ended it after about 50 days.

“If the intention was to restore freedom of navigation, which is what they stated it was, then the results speak for themselves: The shipping industry has not gone back,” said Richard Meade, editor in chief of Lloyd’s List, a shipping publication. ...

 

American inability to guarantee freedom of the seas is a serious turning point for the world.

The funniest thing that's happening to Donald Trump right now is that while he tries to intimidate the Fed to reduce interest rates and they do nothing, yields are soaring all by themselves

 The bond market is issuing a vote of no confidence in our elected leadership.

One branch of Republican government thinks this is the 19th century with a robust manufacturing base it needs to protect with crazy wild tariffs, and another branch of Republican government thinks it's just fine to go on spending like drunken sailors and not raise taxes to pay for any of it.

Interest payments alone on the national debt in fiscal year 2024 soared to $1.1 trillion against revenues of $4.9 trillion.

Meanwhile the most powerful military in the world can't stop a bunch of rag-headed heathen bastards from launching missiles at Israel.

These people are crackerdog.

US Treasury yields are now up a net 2.37% across the curve since last Friday.

 

Long duration is very unhappy: 10Y at 4.53 at the close yesterday, 20Y at 5.00, 30Y at 4.97.

 

VUSTX ytd total return: -0.53%.