"We expended billions of dollars of munitions and resources so you could pay $4/gallon for gas. Give us more money," seems like not great domestic-political messaging, to be honest.

We are fortunate we ran the North Korea crisis in Trump 1.0 and the Iran crisis in Trump 2.0 because the other way around probably gets you a nuclear war.

US: Do more and buy American! Also US:

"If we fail here there will be war."

Me: Please be good please be good please be good. Trailer: IN 1986 THE WORLD WAS ON THE BRINK OF NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION Me: Noooooo.

Me: Please be good please be good please be good. Trailer: IN 1986 THE WORLD WAS ON THE BRINK OF NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION Me: Noooooo.

Free-association presidenting.

I think HMT are trying to get agreement to take over procurement in return for the cash and that's what's causing the delay.

Gone down a bit of a rabbit hole in the archives of Jackie. So on 19th April 1980, one 13-year-old reader wrote movingly to the Cathy & Claire agony aunt page about her fear of nuclear war.

I can't believe "Give up your nuclear program and then we'll economically colonize you" didn't work as a sales pitch.

This is an important point: the UK has been marginal to the US-Israel-Iran War. If the US acts against our interests there, there is very little we can do about it. It would be the same in a US-China war. The UK needs to focus on Europe and drop the pretense of influence elsewhere.

It's really hard to work out what is going on with the UK strategically these days. We appeased Hitler to buy time for a defence buildup. Now we are confronting Putin, but without devoting the necessary resources to restoring our military capability.

Unfortunately, the Strategic Defence Review failed to trigger the much-needed national debate not just on defence spending, but, more broadly, Britain’s strategy in this dangerous time. Easy to blame the media, but it would have been No 10‘s job to drive this conversation./4 But

It's really hard to work out what is going on with the UK strategically these days. We appeased Hitler to buy time for a defence buildup. Now we are confronting Putin, but without devoting the necessary resources to restoring our military capability.

The Iranians' secret hack: sending people with "diplomacy experience" to a diplomatic negotiation.

Is it still a cease-fire if one side is employing an act of war against the other?

These people are completely unburdened by any knowledge or self-doubt

So weird that a state on the receiving end of existential threats from the US government less than a week ago doesn't now want to give up its nuclear program in negotiations with the US government.

This is all so stupid, it really defies analysis.

As soon as the initial sugar rush wears off, Trump will cast around for someone to blame. Domestically, it will probably be Hegseth. Internationally, NATO.

This

This, in itself, is a sign of how massively the Trump administration has messed this up. Resort to first use of nuclear weapons is only even remotely plausible if you are losing -- badly.

I don't think nuclear weapons are seriously under consideration. But the dynamic of issuing ever more lurid threats, each of which fails, will naturally lead to language that is indistinguishable from nuclear threats. bsky.app/profile/ship...

This is going around from a planespotter in UK ~40 minutes ago. Just to pre-bunk some things: - The cruise missiles on the pylons are JASSMs (conventional-only), not AGM-86 (nuclear-only). - AGM-86 is a good deal longer (thus not two rows in line), and different livery <more>

Correction via @fluxt.bsky.social: Curtis LeMay did say the US should bomb North Vietnam "back to the Stone Age" in his 1965 memoir, Mission With LeMay. Quite telling that he later denied when running to be vice president, and an even bleaker reflection on the rhetoric of the Trump administration.

Correction via @fluxt.bsky.social: Curtis LeMay did say the US should bomb North Vietnam "back to the Stone Age" in his 1965 memoir, Mission With LeMay. Quite telling that he later denied when running to be vice president, and an even bleaker reflection on the rhetoric of the Trump administration.

🧵 Prof. Buzzkill @buzzkillprof.bsky.social seems to be wrong that Gen. Curtis LeMay never said, "bomb them back to the Stone Age." The phrase was evoked last week by Trump in his speech. He said, "We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages." It was echoed by Pete Hegseth on Truth Social. 1/x

UK MoD response - No RN ship attacked off Lebanon

I can only imagine the extremely high-level global-strategic deliberations that preceded this decision.

He's certainly convinced me that giving millenarian theocratic leaders access to nuclear weapons is a bad idea.

Is Trump going to escalate the US bombing campaign while a member of American aircrew is MIA, potentially in Iranian custody?

Maybe the real deterrent was the strait-closure we made along the way.

Some real 12-dimensional grand-strategizing here. Just brilliant stuff.

Historical background to the phrase "Bomb them back to the Stone Age." Originally coined by Art Buchwald to satirize Vietnam hawks, misattributed to US Air Force General Curtis LeMay. LeMay denied he said the US should bomb North Vietnam back to the Stone Age. Trump now embraces that rhetoric.

Trump speech is implicit recognition that Iran war is not going well & US options for escalating its way out are bad. 1/

Historical background to the phrase "Bomb them back to the Stone Age." Originally coined by Art Buchwald to satirize Vietnam hawks, misattributed to US Air Force General Curtis LeMay. LeMay denied he said the US should bomb North Vietnam back to the Stone Age. Trump now embraces that rhetoric.

Any US decision to fight Russia comes with the risk of escalation to a nuclear exchange. So Trump can say, "We are not going to risk the destruction of US cities to defend European country X," and many Americans would probably go along with that.

Will US surface Navy be indefinitely excluded from the Gulf now that Iran controls the Strait? US appears to have removed all its warships from inside Gulf in advance of this war. Will they ever go back in, or is Naval Support Activity Bahrain done as a base for 5th Fleet?

Any lasting constraints on Iran's nuclear program achieved through this war (none have been achieved yet) should be measured not against the alternative of doing nothing, but against what could have been and was achieved through diplomatic alternatives that the President has repeatedly disregarded.

This is true, but if Trump simply announces that he won't defend allies and withdraws forces from Europe, the US commitment to NATO is dead anyway.

Can we all agree that a few more, or different, nuclear weapons are not going to solve the challenges faced by US extended deterrence? It’s US behavior that’s the issue, not US capabilities.

Trump: I am strongly considering pulling out of Nato - Daily Telegraph I would say the light is flashing red right now. share.google/GUcrJlSgvgqV...

Trump: I am strongly considering pulling out of Nato - Daily Telegraph I would say the light is flashing red right now. share.google/GUcrJlSgvgqV...

Henry Kissinger during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. "The Europeans behaved like jackals.... They gave us no support when we needed it.... [we need] to assess... what exactly it means to talk about the indissolubility of our interests with respect to defense." history.state.gov/historicaldo...

Lecturer in the History of War and International Relations in the Modern Period (R&T)- University of Glasgow - College of Arts and Humanities - School of Humanities #skystorians 🗃️www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRA732/l...

Long awaited and worth the wait.

Ultimately what the North Atlantic Treaty says about geographic limits and its defensive nature is not decisive. The United States' relative power means that if Trump decides he doesn't want the US to uphold Article 5, then he can just do it and NATO as it has existed since 1949 is a dead letter.

Trump to the UK: "You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us." Extended deterrence is fine, though.

Trump to the UK: "You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us." Extended deterrence is fine, though.