The School of War Reader: How Iran’s Tanker War shaped Trump’s worldview
How Iran’s Tanker War shaped Trump’s worldview
Charlie Laderman, Engelsberg Ideas
Laderman writes about how the 1987 shipping crisis shapes Trump’s views on the nature of alliances:
There are a number of echoes from the situation for 2025 even if, today, Iran is not directly conducting the assaults. … Again as in the 1980s, this has morphed into a broader assault on commercial vessels. And, just as then, this has led to a massive increase in insurance for shipping which has had a major downward drag on global trade…. When it comes to the Red Sea, Iran and its proxies are indeed ‘beating us psychologically, making us look a bunch of fools’. It would be good for both America and its allies for Trump ‘to take them on’ by directly targeting Iran’s spy ships, the ports it uses to supply the Houthis and the IRGC units who oversee the whole enterprise. And even if the US still bears the bulk of the burden, preventing hostile powers from dominating the region’s resources and surrounding sea-lanes remains as critical to America’s own national security and global supremacy as ever.
A Report on the Fighting Culture of the United States Navy Surface Fleet
Robert E. Schmidle and Mark Montgomery
A newly timely report from 2021 on the culture of the US Navy given the recent collision between the USS Harry S. Truman and a merchant ship in Egypt. Its co-author, Mark Montgomery just spoke on the show to discuss cyber and missile defense:
Concern within the Navy runs so high that, when asked whether incidents such as the two destroyer collisions in the Pacific, the surrender of a small craft to the IRGC in the Arabian Gulf, the burning of the Bonhomme Richard and other incidents were part of a broader cultural or leadership problem in the Navy, 94% of interviewees responded “yes,” 3% said “no,” and 3% said “unsure.” And when asked if the incidents were directly connected, 55% said “yes,” 16% said “no,” and 29% said “unsure.” This sentiment, that the Navy is dangerously off course, was overwhelming.
Revolution, reaction, reform
Andrew Baston
A review of Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian’s recent book arguing that Mao, not Deng Xiaoping, began China’s path toward economic reform:
Mao’s death seems to have been necessary for clearing the political stage and allowing the country to truly move on from the Cultural Revolution. But who made the strategic decision that China needed a stronger economy? Who elevated the practical-minded leaders who would make the hard choices necessary in implementing economic reform? After immersion in the history of the long 1970s, it becomes difficult to avoid the conclusion that the person who began China’s pivot to economic reform was none other than the Chairman himself, Mao Zedong.
How Bloomberg Philanthropies Is Boosting Belt and Road Initiative
Thomas Catenacci, The Washington Free Beacon
How American philanthropic efforts are supporting the interests of the Chinese Communist Party:
Among the "advisors" listed on the sleepy website of something known as the Belt and Road International Green Development Coalition (BRIGC) is a senior official at Michael Bloomberg's eponymous philanthropic organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies. ... Read the fine print, and it quickly becomes clear that the BRIGC, established jointly by China and what it describes as "international partners," is an effort to draw global support for the CCP's Belt and Road Initiative under the banner of environmentalism. … The BRIGC's initiatives by and large promote Chinese interests. The initiatives, for example, include the development of a "green Silk Road" to make infrastructure projects more climate-friendly, the Green Innovation Conference promoting green technology development, and the Green Investment and Finance Partnership that boosts green investments in China.
The Prophet of Trump’s Second Term
Matthew Continetti, The Free Press (paywall)
To understand the right, you have to read Matt Continetti:
In 2000, columnist Patrick J. Buchanan defeated Donald Trump for the Reform Party nomination. But it was the property developer and television star who, more than a decade later, brought Buchanan’s populist views on trade, immigration, and nonintervention into the White House. … If Buchanan prefigured President Trump’s first-term nationalism, another thinker anticipated Trump’s second-term war against the administrative state and sweeping revision of American foreign policy: international relations professor Angelo Codevilla. … Today’s political vocabulary—“ruling class,” “administrative state,” “Deep State,” “cold civil war,” “uniparty”—comes from Codevilla’s pen. One sees Codevilla’s influence everywhere, from Trump’s reversal of DEI and affirmative action to DOGE’s unspooling of USAID to reductions in the federal workforce to the foreign-policy pivot toward our own hemisphere.