What an article. Consider what the American president just told the entire world: Please don’t interfere in my relationship with a murderous dictator, or he might help the country that America’s men and women in uniform are fighting at this very moment. The leader of the most powerful nation on the planet—yes, that’s still the United States right now—is trying to get everyone else, including the American Congress, to avoid antagonizing Putin, instead of warning Putin not to even think about aiding Iran. As always, The Atlantic’s solution to every situation is to be more aggressive and militaristic. A more sane version of this article would be criticizing Trump for starting the war in Iran to begin with. But The Atlantic jizzes their pants over the war because they’d been dreaming about it for ages. The author seems to be struggling here with the concept that Superman does not exist. The US, like any country, has a limited ability to throw it’s weight around. This is exactly why sanctions on Russia didn’t work and were never going to work, because they just sold their oil through India and China, and China was never going to cooperate on sanctions while we were antagonizing them in a pointless trade war. “Full aggression on every front,” the dream of every Atlantic writer, only has the effect of spreading the US thin and weakening its ability to apply real pressure anywhere. The irony here is that Trump is overextending the US and trying to be in too many places at once, by starting the Iran War. Most ordinary people, including many on the right, oppose the war for that reason. But The Atlantic is so committed to full aggression everywhere that they somehow find a way to argue Trump isn’t overextending enough. And, naturally, their objection seems to primarily be that it’s undignified to acknowledge these limitations, rather than framing things around any actual human cost. A world in which the White House is allied to the Kremlin was, until now, the stuff of paranoid fiction. Manchurian candidates and red presidents were fantasies, dark tales that Americans told themselves, like ghost stories around a campfire. But this alliance now exists. If Stalin and his Cold War successors could see what Trump and Putin have created, and how the mighty United States has been humbled and humiliated, they might think that their evil hopes were not wrong, but only that they dreamed them too early. This whole framing of it being an “alliance” because the US stopped sanctioning them is patently absurd. Is the US “allied” with every country it’s not currently sanctioning? Words mean things. But what’s especially ironic about this part is that the USSR, under Stalin, was literally part of “The Allies,” during WWII. The US traded with the Soviets, fought on the same side against a common enemy, sent them military aid, coordinated on military strategy, etc. Why would Stalin consider it particularly remarkable, even if the US had entered an actual alliance with the Russian Federation? It’s just stupid. By the way, why did the US ally with Stalin? Was it because FDR secretly agreed with him, ideologically? Or was it because the US was aware of it’s material limitations and made the correct decision to focus on one problem at a time, instead of maximum aggression towards everyone at once? If this guy had been in charge back then, we’d all be speaking German. Even after WWII, throughout the Cold War, the US traded with the USSR. The US also signed treaties and agreements such as SALT. And whenever it did, there were plenty of these insane, warmongering reactionaries, like the author, who pushed the exact same kinds of exaggerated rhetoric and conspiracy theories about how the politicians responsible were being controlled or manipulated by the Kremlin. These extremist nutjobs want the same thing they always have, a future where when the dust settles there’s two Americans left and one Russian, so they can call it a “victory.” he may well believe that some janky diesel deal with Russia will alleviate high fuel prices in the United States. (It will not, although it will certainly help some Russian companies.) Honestly I just love this line. “It will not,” zero elaboration whatsoever. Reminds me of this classic Onion article. Why would making a trade to make oil more directly accessible, instead of shipping it to China or India first, not lower fuel prices? Even if there’s some reason why it wouldn’t, why isn’t it included in the article? It’s just unprofessional. It seems that the author included that line because he’s concerned that people will care more about fuel prices than the rest of his arguments, and he’s concerned such people might agree with Trump. But how on earth do you paint yourself into such a corner, in your own article, that you’re left baselessly asserting, “it won’t,” regarding Trump and fuel prices? Donald Trump is solely, directly responsible for prices soaring, on account of his pointless, failed war of aggression against Iran. But again, no one at The Atlantic wants to frame things in those terms, because they just love war so damn much.