DDAVIS—Russia perceives a long-standing, deep hostility aimed at weakening or destroying it, regardless of whether that perception is accurate or exaggerated. This psychology shapes Russia’s strategic posture.
Professor Karaganov highlights a critical paradox: fear of Russia’s nuclear weapons creates stability; without such fear, adversaries might escalate provocations leading to war.
The concept that nuclear deterrence, despite its fearsome nature, prevents conflict remains central to Russian thinking, particularly as traditional arms control agreements have eroded.

ERIC ZUESSE—On May 20th, I headlined “Sauds, Qataris, & UAE Moving Away From U.S. to Russia-China-Pakistani-Turkish Alliance” and reported that the Kings in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE, had laid down the law to Trump that if he resumed bombing Iran, then Iran would bomb their own countries, not just the U.S. bases but the desalination plants that allow people to live there, and so they’d then abandon the U.S. and create an alliance with Russia-China-Pakistan-Turkey, and the U.S. empire would effectively be over, and Israel would then be on its own, no longer controlling the U.S. (as has been the case since at least 1967).

EZ—The most articulate supporters of this view are at the Neighborhood Club of Finland, which was started in 2022 by Mauno Eljas Saari (born 16 June 1947 in Tornio), a Finnish journalist, author and screenwriter, who in 2014 had noticed that the ‘democratic revolution’ in February 2014 in Ukraine had, in fact, been instead a successful U.S. coup that replaced Ukraine’s democratically elected and committedly neutralist President Yanukovych by a U.S.-Government-selected team to run the country and get rid of Ukrainians in areas of Ukraine that had voted by more than 75% for the neutralist Yanukovych. It was part of American billionaires’ longstanding effort to conquer Russia in order to take over the world.

OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT—Because we must believe that markets have learned something from recent White House manipulations, the downward trend may be responding to something other than Trump pronouncements, and that “something” may be a belief that Trump is disinclined to attack. Why? Perhaps because even Trump has been persuaded that the US is in an unwinnable situation right now, with insufficient forces in the Gulf.

TIM BEAL—The central role of the United States in international affairs must be unearthed and analyzed. Nothing much of consequence happens in the world without U.S. involvement. At the same time, that involvement is hidden, and the U.S. empire’s role obscured or distorted by its huge and largely successful propaganda apparatus. The ongoing Ukraine crisis is a salient example. The root cause is NATO expansion driven by the U.S. as an instrument of its strategy to disempower Russia. The other major players—Russia, Ukraine and the European countries—are subsidiary, and, whether wisely or not, reacting to U.S. grand policy. Needless to say, this is not the way it is portrayed by the United States.