Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Mark Thompson

“When you run out of munitions, start launching threats. That’s obviously President Donald Trump’s latest strategy (to misuse the word) as his promised short war against Iran drags into its sixth month. It’s The Bunker’s grim mission to note where the U.S. military is falling short. Much of that is due to the military itself, but just as large a share is the responsibility of the institutional factors that fund it, enable it, and order it into action. Bottom line: Focusing on fixing an airplane in hopes that it can fly right won’t work if you only tinker with those ailerons trailing off its wings, while ignoring the fuselage, engines, and crew.” (08/13/26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-military-procurement-problems/

Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen

“Mali remains in chaos. Al-Qaeda-linked militants and Tuareg separatists have recently demonstrated an ability to coordinate attacks against the Malian military, while the country’s Russian-backed junta struggles to maintain control over territory far beyond the capital. Violence has spread across the Sahel, and Mali remains one of the epicenters of the region’s seemingly endless war against jihadist insurgencies. Washington’s answer, as usual, is to ask what more it can do. That is the wrong question. The more important question is what Washington has already done.” (08/13/26)

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/washington-can-only-make-malis-crisis-worse

Source: Cobden Centre
by Jeremy E Powell

“Ever since the sanctions onto Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, combined with real domestic economic anxieties of the post-pandemic era and declining institutional trust, a handful of libertarians and a mix of anti-war conservatives and the far-left have been announcing that de-dollarization was inevitable, prompted by BRICS’s desire to pursue a gold-backed currency.” (08/13/26)

https://www.cobdencentre.org/2026/08/why-a-brics-gold-standard-is-a-fiction/

Source: Antiwar.com
by Timothy Hopper

“CNN reported this weekend that Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has privately urged senior Trump administration officials to look for an ‘off-ramp’ from the war with Iran. According to three sources familiar with the discussions, Caine has warned that further escalation could backfire and that airpower alone is unlikely to achieve President Donald Trump’s stated objectives. His team declined to discuss confidential conversations, and the White House emphasized that Caine provides the president with options rather than policy prescriptions. That distinction matters. Caine is the president’s senior military adviser, not the official who decides where the war should end. But the report exposes the question Washington can no longer avoid: not whether the United States has enough power to continue fighting, but how much of its future power it should spend on a mission whose political endpoint remains uncertain.” (08/13/26)

https://original.antiwar.com/timothy_hopper/2026/08/12/when-victory-no-longer-justifies-the-iran-war

Source: UnHerd
by Chuck Palahniuk

“Philadelphia, 2019. An Uber is hauling me to the nearest Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and I ask the driver to name the best parts of Philly. A twenty-something black guy, he says, “I don’t think there are any good parts.” He clocks me in the rearview mirror and asks, ‘Are you the writer?’ The young man pulls out his phone and hits a number, saying, ‘You have to talk to my mom. Her favorite movie is Fight Club.’ … In 1999 the head of publicity at Twentieth Century Fox had told the director, David Fincher, ‘You’ve made a movie with so much male nudity that no man will want to see it, and so much blood that no woman will. You’ve made a movie that’s impossible to market.’ Yet here I am laughing away with a middle-aged mother and her son who both came to love the story.” (08/13/26)

https://archive.is/zEqHM