Alexander Clarkson
@aphclarkson
Senior Lecturer for European Politics and History at King's College London. Opinions my own. RT not always endorsement. Also to be found at @APHClarkson
American news media and think tanks are still incapable of coming to terms with how a majority of American voters opted to elect a demented sociopath as their President
Presumably Mitch McConnell is sleeping in his armour on a throne deep inside Black Mountain and will only wake up when the falling American Empire is restored in a 1000 years time
Friendly reminder to people on this site that more often than not the milieu around Ryan Grim does its best to confirm that horseshoe theory is a thing
Datapoint nr 9400 for how the TACO meme generates an often disastrous false sense of certainty about someone as sociopathically erratic as Donald Trump
What is happening here to the Russians in Northern Mali has eerie parallels to the strategic trap the French wandered into at Dien Bien Phu
Is this what the 4th of July on America at 250 is going to be rememberer for?
This is what a Dem-dominated Congress might face in the first weeks of January if Trump contests the mid-terms and encourages anyone who supports his authoritarian instincts to march on Washington DC
If previous rounds of Iran's hostage diplomacy are anything to go by (right now the hostage is the Strait), unconditional concessions could just as well embolden hardliners to demand that pragmatists unlock more unconditional concessions, leading to failure and more war instead
The extent to which the US can influence internal dynamics in Tehran beyond backing off a bit during a ceasefire is limited. If hardliners can't cope with compromises for FDI needed to save Iran's economy and play into Israel's hands instead this all just flows into the next war
The problem with this is while Trump is a disaster, Iran's elites have agency too. Expecting the US to endlessly cater to Iranian factional rivalries rather than acknowledging that peace also needs Tehran to shift would be unrealistic even under better US Presidents foreignpolicy.com/2026/06/30/i...
Though to be fair the first North American nation to declare that all citizens were fully equal no matter what their origins was Mexico
It would be one of history's great ironies if it turns out that the side that opted to stay loyal to the Crown ends up establishing the democratic nation that is more able to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
North America's most successful great experiment in promoting liberty and human happiness