The primary objective of the war in Ukraine was to break Europe. That objective has been largely achieved. The unexpected consequence was that Russia did not fold under sanctions, and it backfired through inflation in the US domestic economy. This was why the Fed hiked rates for the past two years, placing the dominant status of the US dollar under unprecedented risk.

The last two years have been the Biden administration adapting to this new reality and gambling that China would not take advantage of this exposed weakness of the dollar, and their gambit worked. The US dollar has more or less restored its strength and now it’s time to turn against Iran before the entire Middle East fell to China’s influence - which is only a matter of time if the US doesn’t do anything.

You are assuming that capitalism cannot adapt to failures (which happen all the time), but in fact capitalism is infinitely adaptable to new dynamics, which is why Marxist-Leninist theories are so important - these opportunities that expose the weakness of the imperial power occur only once in a while, and if they are not seized upon, the gap would be filled in short notice.

The US and Israel both want to destroy Iran. There is no “provoking US entry”, both their strategic goals are completely aligned at this point. This is their last chance to get the damage done before the opportunity is lost forever. The war in Ukraine threw a wrench into their long term plan and they’re simply adjusting to the reality of having to accelerate the war before it is too late.

They’re willing to take the gamble, because the alternative is Israel losing its ethnostate dream and America losing its control of the Near/Middle East to China forever.

Both outcomes present an existential crisis to their respective ideologies: the Zionists are never going to give up the ethnostate dream because that would be the end of their ideology; the American imperialists are never going to let their control of the periphery slip away without putting on a real fight because that would also be the end of their imperialist ambitions.

there's 100 ways they could have been more methodical and less clumsy

Like how?

That’s not a materialist understanding of how US imperialism works on the Global South.

Quoting Michael Hudson once again:

Among the BRICS+ countries, Argentina is a case in point. Its foreign dollar debt has grown largely by IMF sponsorship. The IMF’s main political function in US foreign policy has been to enable pro-American client oligarchies to move their money out of countries whenever there is a chance of a left-wing or simply democratic reformer being elected. Convert their Argentinean currency into dollars lowers the peso’s exchange rate. Without IMF intervention, that would mean that as the exchange rate falls, the wealthy classes engaging in capital flight receive fewer and fewer dollars. To support the currency – and hence, the hard-currency dollars that capital-flight actors receive – the IMF lends the right-wing government dollars to buy up the excess pesos that the client oligarchy is selling off. That enables Argentineans to move their money out of the country to obtain a much higher amount of US dollars than they would if the IMF were not lending money to the right-wing puppet government.

When the new reform government comes in, it finds itself loaded down with a huge foreign debt owed to the IMF. This debt has not been taken on in a way that helped Argentina develop its economy and earn dollars to pay back the loan. It is simply a result of IMF support of right-wing governments. And the IMF then tells the new government (whether Argentina or any other debtor) to pay off its foreign loans by lowering the wages of labor. That is the only way that the IMF recognizes for countries to “stabilize” their balance of payments. So the reform government is obliged to behave just like a right-wing government, intensifying the class war of capital against labor. The “cure” for their balance-of-payments deficits thus becomes even worse than the original disease, that is, its rentier oligarchy moving their money out of the country.

They’re eating our dogs! They’re eating our cats!

Slave labor (including those in concentration camps) made up a quarter of Nazi Germany’s labor force during the war, where it was a key component fully integrated into the war economy allowing large corporations (the familiar names e.g. Thyssen, Krupp, Bosch, Siemens etc) to utilize these labor.

I don’t know what America’s plan is for deporting these immigrants but the labor force needs to be replaced somehow. Right now, these immigrant labor are already fulfilling their function as intended under neoliberal capitalism, which benefits the Wall Street financier class.

Are you saying that it wasn’t the CIA weather machine that brought Raisi’s helicopter down?

It filled a lot of gap for Lenin’s Imperialism for me, with historical accounts and data to back them up. It’s an academic book afterall.

What is the reason for Pennsylvania to lose so much support for the Democrats?

Trotsky, who famously said that FDR’s New Deal would bankrupt America lol.

Sorry but Trotsky simply doesn’t understand how money works and the USSR would never have gotten out of its NEP phase if he had been given the power to intervene. The USSR probably wouldn’t even last two decades.

There is never going to be a conventional war with China. Nukes are the only options left when it comes down to this.

Even with an “intact” military, the US cannot possibly defeat China plus Russia plus Iran in conventional warfare.

What they’re doing is just translating obsolete and surplus military equipments and munitions into fictitious GDP numbers by getting them blown up in Ukraine, Israel and wherever the US has its “allies” fight a war in.

The war against China is always going to be a financial war, which means the control and reshaping of the global supply chain, and which include inciting proxy wars across strategic locations across the world.

This is just the logical move for the Democrats.

If Trump stops running for president in 2028 as he’d said, then the opportunity for the Democrats to become the new Republican party could be lost forever. Thanks to Trump, never has there been a Republican president that has managed to piss off the

1. National security state
2. Military industrial complex
3. Fossil fuel industry
4. Wall Street finance capital

all at the same time. This is also why you’re seeing so many Reaganites and the Bushes and the Cheneys defecting to the Democratic party. This is the one shot they’ve got.

I know the Democrats like to paint Trump as this embodiment of evil, but Trump really doesn’t know what he’s doing. He was born into a New York landlord class family who only knew how to use blatant bullying tactics on real estate managers and property developers. When it comes to managing an empire and enforcing the flow of tens of trillions of capital through the free market, he’s completely clueless.

He’s had a chance to prove himself in 2016. But what really changed the game was Biden’s Ukraine war, and all the four sectors above (what Michael Hudson called ‘the blob’) have tremendously profited from the war since 2022. Harris promised to continue Biden’s policies (even outright saying that there won’t be any difference from the Biden administration) and this is why she will win the election, and Trump will lose.