The first eight days of the year were taxing for me. I was super-eager to use my Middle Eastern and strategic-affairs smarts to try to understand/explain what was happening in Trump’s massive and very perilous showdown with the Islamic Republic of Iran. I was also helping family members deal with health crises. In the past week I have also not had much time to do any serious writing of my own, for various reasons. But I’ve done a lot of thinking and online research into various aspects of the current strategic (im-)balance in the Middle East, particularly Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, and am moving toward being able to write some serious articles on topics such as the following:

1. Gaza as a model for what “maximum pressure” aims at.

2. Washington’s latest version of full-spectrum, regime-changing, hybrid warfare: financial, economic, highly developed information ops, military probing, etc. As has been recently tested–and is still being tested– in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Bolivia, etc.

3. Iraq, 17 years after the “cakewalk”. (And why no accountability for those in the United States who lied us and led us into that massive crime of aggression?)

4. Russia and China patiently getting their Middle Eastern ducks in a row.

5. Why do so many Americans think it’s somehow “natural” for our government, representing less than 5% of humankind, to control the whole of the international system, and what would a better US vs. Rest of the World system look like?

As you can see, there’s a lot there! At this point, actually, ways too much. That’s why I need a bit more time to winnow down the list.

Meantime, if you haven’t read this piece, which I published last June, I urge you to do so. I am kind of intrigued about the timelines involved in the final dissolution of the British Empire and what they might or might not tell us about the dissolution of the American empire…