Michael Brodiak

@knappaste @general_ben U.S. troops in Germany fell from 250K (1989)to 35K today an 85% drop It’s a trend that started after the Cold War I think Trump proposal is just boasting bluff on a long-term trend that gradually will shift the frontline to the east while keeping the German logistic hub

@Brognarok @general_ben And just replace all the Infrastructure and logistics built in Germany over decades? Bases, hospitals airfields and so on…. Sounds expensive.

Only Putin would benefit from such a short-sighted move. America cannot defend itself or its interests from Fort Bragg or Norfolk…we need forward presence and forward friends.

@Kasparov63 Trump might have said Ukraine, but clearly he was talking about Iran

You also wouldn't know that from listening to US and European military and intelligence. But you might think that if you only listened to Vladimir Putin. It's ironic that even Putin may think it's true due to his commanders being afraid to tell him the truth!

@kilmeade @JohnCleese The reason Putin can’t help the ayatollahs, Maduro or any other of America’s foes, is that he is pinned down by the Ukrainians The Ukrainians are now the facto, along Israeli, the war allies of the U.S. Not helping Ukraine in is a very short sighted and even dangerous policy

Ukriane deserves every weapon we can spare…they are beating our enemy too!!Why is the Pentagon holding up Ukraine funds? washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/…

@Microinteracti1 This might be actually the opposite of appeasing Putin U.S. decided since 2020, under Trump 01, and partially started shifting some troops from Germany to Poland and Romania The move accelerated especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine

On direct orders from Putin, following a 90-minute phone call, Trump has announced he is reviewing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Germany. The tweet says the United States is “studying and reviewing” a possible reduction. But the effect is the same. You threaten to remove the forces that have kept Europe stable for eighty years, and the only person on the planet who benefits is the one sitting in the Kremlin. The stated reason is punishment. Trump wants to penalize NATO allies who did not support his Iran war. Germany is the primary target. Poland, Romania, Lithuania and Greece stand to gain whatever troops Berlin loses.  The problem is that Ramstein Air Base in Germany served as a logistics hub for those very Iran operations. Trump is threatening to dismantle the infrastructure that made his own war possible. U.S. forces are not stationed in Germany as a favor to the Germans. They are there to deter aggression, support rapid deployment to the Middle East and Africa, and use facilities provided free of charge by German taxpayers.  The tweet closes with “Thank you for your attention to this matter.” Signed, apparently, by a man who just handed Moscow a foreign policy victory without firing a single shot. Putin did not need to invade Germany. He just needed to wait for Trump to empty it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ If you like what you read, follow Gandalv on X: @Microinteracti1

Billie Eilish says after doing a little bit of research she was really scared of climate change. Well I’ve done a little bit of research and what I found was quite the opposite!

@warsurv The Strait will remain restricted until $11 trillion riyals in frozen Iranian assets … will be worth about $11 😂

🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷 STRAIT OF HORMUZ TENSIONS ESCALATE 🇺🇸 J.D. Vance: “Open the Strait of Hormuz unconditionally, or military action could follow.” 🇮🇷 Abbas Araghchi: “The Strait will remain restricted until $11 trillion riyals in frozen Iranian assets are released.”

@Telegraph If the chancellor stops printing and spending money we don’t have, the inflation will surely disappear

🇪🇺 Chancellor insists removing trade barriers with EU will bring down inflation for households Do you agree with her view? telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/…

@WarMonitor3 Not all the chess pieces are in place, yet Next one will be everything, everywhere, all at once, going for the chess mate Gradually escalating is not a good idea

It clear today that Trump after convening a meeting with his core advisors decide against strikes on Iran in this instance, likely persuaded by JD Vance and Rubio to take a different course of action for now.

@DrEliDavid Translation: you guys better make up your mind before George HW Bush arrives

Brilliant move by Trump. No war, no deal, no oil, until their economy collapses. _

@UKLabour You don't seem to understand that wind and solar generate electricity only for one third of the year. In the remaining two thirds of the time the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow If we build more renewables they will only produce electricity when we don't need it

Some say we have gone too far and too fast on speeding up the transition to clean power. We disagree. As we face the second fossil fuel shock in 5 years, it’s time to go further.

@WarMonitor3 One doesn’t know what to do when hears this: to laugh or to cry at the state of Western politics

The European Union Is set to encourage members not to shut down nuclear power plants due to increase energy insecurity due to rising global instability.

@WeaponsVault War Thunder should revisit their T series specs Turrets don’t pop like that and definitely far too resilient in the game 😜

Close-up view of Russian T-90 MBT being torn into pieces after catastrophic explosion 💥 Vaporized in an instant while on an adrenaline high.

@10DowningStreet You can’t Renewable’s annual capacity factor, the time when they produce energy (wind blow or sun shine), is around 30% The rest of 70% either we burn something, preferably locally produced, or split the atom No other solution because we can’t store the unreliable energy

We are breaking the link between gas prices and electricity prices, so you don’t pay the bill for global energy spikes. We are building a more resilient Britain - putting more money in your pocket and protecting households from future global shocks.

@bearsarestupid @WarMonitor3 Directly from the horse’s mouth youtu.be/1kYgmE6QZFw?si… Enjoy

@Brognarok @WarMonitor3 Typical Ukrotard didn't read the Budapest Memorandom. Zero security assurances or guarantees. At all. None.

The world is at risk of a fresh nuclear arms race the head of the UN atomic agency has warned due to rising world tensions. Wow...

@NiohBerg He’ll understand you can’t negotiate with the mullahs… …right about the time the USS George H.W. Bush steams into CENTCOM area 
Until then? More talks 🤪

The sooner President Trump understands he can't negotiate his way out of this war, the better.

Food for thought. Iran Is Not Winning. It Is Unraveling. The prevailing narrative on Iran has it almost perfectly reversed. We are told that Tehran is winning a war of wills in the Gulf and that Donald Trump is gambling recklessly with the world’s most sensitive chokepoint. In reality, Iran is not consolidating strength; it is managing decline. And Trump’s play on the Strait of Hormuz has quietly forced energy markets to reprice security—tilting the balance decisively toward the Americas, and away from Europe, Asia and China. The Islamic Republic no longer resembles a confident revolutionary project. With the old clerical core leadership shattered, power has splintered between a camp that recognises a deal with the outside world as the only path to survival and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a class of military dictators with guns, patronage networks and a rational fear that any genuine settlement will ultimately throw them overboard. This is not a unified strategy at work; it’s infighting, paranoia, a fragmented system in late-stage decay, crumbling under pressure. Into this fragmentation, the White House has introduced a form of calibrated coercion too often caricatured as impulsive. Around the Strait of Hormuz, Washington has threatened disruption without fully triggering it, forcing shipowners, insurers and policymakers to absorb a hard truth: dependence on vulnerable, seaborne Middle Eastern barrels is not a passing inconvenience but a structural risk. Iran can harass tankers and jolt day-to-day sentiment; it cannot rebuild a broken economy on sporadic shocks to global shipping. And the world must deal with the end of Pax Americana! The underlying playbook is anything but novel. Sun Tzu’s insistence that “all warfare is based on deception”, Machiavelli’s counsel that a ruler must manipulate appearances and exploit factionalism, and Alfred Thayer Mahan’s argument that sea power and control of chokepoints shape the fate of nations are not museum pieces. They are, in this case, the operating code. Trump’s opaque signalling, deliberate use of disinformation and visible but limited naval posture in and around Hormuz amount to a modern, Mahanian use of sea power as economic statecraft. Energy markets are already adjusting. Tankers are head to the Gulf of America. In a world where a single strait can a risk to economies is Europe and Asia, without ever being fully closed, assets tied to secure basins and diversified export routes deserve a premium. The Americas sit in an enviable position: vast, politically stable hydrocarbon resources, multiple pipelines and ports, and no dependence on a distant maritime chokepoint controlled by adversaries. By contrast, Europe, much of Asia and China find themselves downstream of vulnerabilities they do not control and regimes they cannot stabilise, exposed to shipping routes that can be threatened faster than alternative supply can be mobilised. All of this plays out against a domestic backdrop in Iran that looks less like revolutionary vigour and more like fear. A state that cannot safely keep its internet on, that must rely on public brutality to deter dissent, is not projecting confidence. It is signalling weakness, to its own citizens as much as to its rivals. Winston Churchill once remarked that “in war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity; in peace, goodwill.” Iran’s leadership offers only defiance, without realistic prospects of victory or peace. The uncomfortable conclusion for those still insisting that Tehran is “winning” is that what they are observing is not the rise of a regional hegemon, but the protracted, strategically exploited unwinding of a brittle regime at the centre of an overexposed energy system.

⚡️The von der Leyen quote is one of the most revealing things a European leader has said in the last decade and almost nobody is going to process it correctly. “The cheapest energy is the one you don’t use.” That is a sentence spoken by a person presiding over civilizational decline who has decided to reframe the decline as virtue. It’s not a policy statement. It’s a theological position. The energy crisis isn’t a problem to be solved by producing more energy. It’s an opportunity for Europeans to need less. To want less. To consume less. To live smaller lives in smaller apartments heated to lower temperatures with less travel and less activity and less economic output. The scarcity isn’t a failure. It’s the goal. This is the thing Americans and everyone outside of Europe cannot fully grasp about where European elite thinking has landed. They genuinely believe that reducing European energy consumption is morally good regardless of the economic consequences, because European consumption is tied to European environmental guilt which is tied to European colonial guilt which is tied to a broader belief that European civilization has been net negative for the world and should shrink. The energy crisis gives them political cover to implement policies that would otherwise be unpopular. Now they can say circumstances force the reduction when the reduction was always the plan. Von der Leyen is not an aberration. She represents the consensus view among the European political class. Macron believes this. Scholz believes this. The entire EU Commission believes this. They don’t say it this directly usually because it polls badly, but every major policy they implement is consistent with this worldview. Degrowth is not a fringe academic position in European politics. It’s the operating framework at the top. The American version of this framing would be “the cheapest energy is the one we produce ourselves at scale.” That’s what actually reduces cost and increases resilience. Building more nuclear, extracting more gas, expanding the grid, investing in new production. The European version is the opposite. Don’t build anything. Don’t extract anything. Don’t produce anything. Just use less. And when citizens can’t heat their homes or fly for work, frame it as virtue. This is why Europe can’t recover from the current trajectory. The recovery would require a complete reversal of the ideological framework that produced the decline, and that framework is held most strongly by exactly the people who have the power to change it. They’re not going to reverse it because they don’t see the trajectory as a problem. They see it as necessary and good.