August 20th, 2026
Greetings!
Typically, at least for me, birthdays just come and go. There is no use getting worried about them because the alternative is worse.
While my Mom – Mary was her name – was alive, I enjoyed them more because I viewed them as not about myself, but as a celebration for everything my mother went through carrying me for nine months.
We really do have birthdays backwards. They always, in my opinion, should be about our mothers and their sacrifices.
Yet, today, my 63rd birthday, feels different. I find myself in a reflective mood, thinking about the world as it has changed since 1963.
Photo credit: United Artists. Movie poster of Ian Fleming’s ‘From Russia with Love’1963 movie starring Sean Connery.
Granted, it was – like it is today – a highly imperfect world. Three months after I was born, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. My Mom was watching ‘As The World Turns’ on CBS with me at her side.
After CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite broke in with the news that Kennedy had been shot, the world turned, and then, seemingly, for my parents’ generation it stopped. Yet it was also a year of striving to be a better and more perfect nation. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington – only eight days after I was born – was proof of that.
Geopolitically, there was a clear sense that Russia was the enemy. Some things, it seems, never change. Even the pop-culture of the time captured the mood: ‘From Russia with Love’ starring Sean Connery as James Bond was a top hit in 1963.
Washington then, unlike now, understood that to contain Russia – or the Soviet Union as it was then known – alliances and partnerships were key. Fast-forward sixty-three years to today and alarmingly many of those Cold War pacts are unraveling.
Let’s get started understanding why that is not a good thing.
***
1963
My birth was a little over nine months after the Cuban Missile Crisis. I never asked but perhaps I was a Doomsday child.
Nuclear brinksmanship and a space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union defined not only 1963, but the entire decade of the 1960s. NATO, by then, was the central pillar of not just U.S. national security, but Western security as a whole.
In 1961, the Berlin Crisis reached its peak when East German leader Walter Ulbricht ordered the Berlin Wall to be built.
Photo credit: National Museum of American Diplomacy. The Berlin Wall dividing East Germany from West Germany in Berlin in an undated photograph.
The Iron Curtain quickly became very real and nations – including Poland, the Baltic States, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Ukraine – were trapped on the wrong side of that curtain.
Years later, while living as a kid in Germany in the early 1970s, almost daily on the radio, I would hear reports of East Germans being shot as they attempted to escape Soviet tyranny into West Germany.
For me, at least, that wall represented the dividing line between good and evil. It would not be torn down until 1989.
Yet now, and inexplicably to me, it is President Donald Trump who is wittingly or not building a very different kind of wall – one that is alienating our closest allies. The White House pattern is becoming far too frequent: Trump keeps treating U.S. strategic partners as transactional liabilities whenever they fail to align perfectly with Washington.
***
THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY
In terms of the good, it was past time for Washington to have a frank conversation with its NATO allies over defense spending. 2% of GDP spending was no longer going to cut it in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Likewise, shoring up the defense of Greenland and eliminating Chinese influence in the Panama Canal were both long overdue. As global warming opens up the Northern Sea Route and the U.S. pursues an Iron Dome-like missile defense, securing Greenland is key.
Preventing China from getting a stranglehold on the Panama Canal is vital to U.S. national security as well.
***
Yet Team Trump went about it in a bad way. Vice President JD Vance set the tone on February 14th, 2025,
During the Munich Security Conference, Vance attacked Washington’s NATO allies, accusing their governments of “running in fear of their own voters.”
Even worse, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war raging in Ukraine, he naively claimed Europe’s greatest security challenge was itself. He told a stunned audience that, “The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia [nor] China, [but] the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.”
That was not the Valentine’s Day ‘Will You Be Mine’ message Europe was looking for from the new White House administration. Nor was it effective as later evidenced in Iran. Quite the opposite, it has proved to be self-defeating.
It only got worse when Trump threatened to militarily seize Greenland which is a sovereign territory of Denmark, a fellow NATO ally. It was foolish for Trump to take that tack. Especially since that is what the Soviet Union, in effect, used to do.
In keeping with the 1960s theme, I am old enough to remember when on the night of August 20th, 1968 – my birthday, no less! – hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia to put down the Prague Spring.
Photo credit: Libor Hajsky / AP. Czech youths holding Czechoslovakian flags stand atop of an overturned truck as other Prague residents surround Soviet tanks in downtown Prague on Aug. 21st, 1968.
These are who the U.S.’ enemies were, and still are, as evidenced by Russia in Ukraine. It should never be what the U.S. becomes.
***
The ugly is what we witnessed as the Iran war has played out. NATO member-states, stinging from Team Trump’s rebukes and threats, refused to back U.S. action in destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Subsequently, they have also refused to help the U.S. secure the Strait of Hormuz until after the conflict is over.
Alienating allies, especially when you might need them, is never a good idea. Doing so led to both Italy and Spain denying the U.S. use of certain bases. Even the United Kingdom denied use of Diego Garcia for a while.
You reap what you sow.
***
TRUMP IS DOING IT AGAIN
You would think Trump realizes his course of action against NATO was self-defeating, especially given the Iran war. Yet, for reasons I cannot fathom outside of the likelihood he just inherently believes in being a disruptor, he is doing it again.
This time he is taking South Korea to task. Granted, as I noted in the July 29th edition of the INTREP360 Intelligence Report, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung is creating problems between Seoul and Washington.
However, Trump turning to North Korea for answers is not the answer. Especially when North Korea is actively aiding and arming Russian forces fighting in Ukraine and launching deadly ballistic missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian civilians.
South Korea, over time, has become the anchor tying the U.S. Three Island Chain defense strategy to the Asian mainland. North Korea is never going to be that partner, at least while North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and his murderous regime remain in power.
33,739 U.S. soldiers died fighting against North Korea during the Korean War between June 25th, 1950, and July 27th, 1953. Another 103,284 American servicemen were wounded. They did not make that sacrifice – especially the ultimate sacrifice – so that Trump could give it all back to the likes of Kim Jong-un.
Nor will U.S. Indo-Pacific allies – especially Japan which endures frequent overflights of North Korean ballistic missile tests – view it positively either. They, like the U.S.’ NATO allies, see the U.S. as increasingly erratic at best or unreliable at worst.
***
RUSSIA, CHINA & THE AXIS OF EVIL ARE THE ONLY WINNERS
Team Trump needs to understand that the unraveling of U.S. Cold War strategic alliances – many of which have been in place since the end of World War II – only strengthens Russia, China, and their Axis of Evil allies including Iran and North Korea. Trump must reverse course before it is too late.
Will he?
The answer, my friends, as Peter, Paul and Mary sang in Bob Dylan’s 1963 hit, is blowin’ in the wind.
***
ICYMI #1
In our weekly Thursday 7 AM ET national security column at The Hill in Washington, D.C., we heavily criticized the former Ukrainian defense minister, for his political power play against President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Photo credit: Mykhailo Fedorov YouTube Channel via AP. Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov calls for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to find a legal way to hold elections.
Now is not a time for a modern-day Brutus. Especially when there is no constitutional way to hold elections. The war in Ukraine still hangs in the balance and Russian President Vladimir Putin is not giving up.
You can read it here.
***
ICYMI #2
Yesterday, Jon appeared on Q News, the English-speaking outlet of Al Qahera News in Cairo, Egypt. He explored whether or not President Donald Trump’s latest “economic stranglehold” approach to Iran can succeed.
You can watch it here.
***
ICYMI #3
Yesterday, I appeared on Al Qahera News in an hour-long segment. The topic was Mohammad Bagher Ghalifbaf’s visit to Iraq. He is the Secretary of the Iranian Parliament. He met with his counterpart in Iraq only two days after Iranian drones targeted the regional Iraqi prime minister’s office in Kurdistan.
I warned Ghalibaf is making a power play against the Trump Administration in Iraq to prevent the disarming of Shia militias as Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has pledged to do by September 30th.
I also warned that Trump’s dithering in closing out the war in Iran is making Iraq vulnerable to Iranian pressure. Its economy is being strangled as 97% of its oil exports travel through the Strait of Hormuz.
I closed the segment out by pointing out that the Arab world is at risk of Turkey and Iran having more influence than they do in the region. It got the host’s attention and was clearly received as a wakeup call.
You can watch a clip here or you can watch the entire segment here. Please note that the program is in Arabic.
***
Thank you for reading. We will see you tomorrow. Please subscribe, comment & share. We truly appreciate it!
Mark
Follow Jon on X at @JESweet2022 or on Bluesky at @JonSweet.bsky.social. Follow Mark on X at @MCTothSTL or on Bluesky at @MarkToth.bsky.social.
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