(This article was written By Peter Huessy appeared in the RealClearDefense. Restraint or Escalation: America’s Nuclear Future? – RealClearDefense

 

Some analysts argue that a new international arms-control framework is the best path forward, contending that the only alternative to contrived restraint is escalation and global instability. But does this paradigm actually make sense?

Consider first the U.S. Program of Record (POR)—the congressionally approved and funded modernization of America’s land-based, sea-based, and cruise missile forces, along with new ballistic missile submarines and strategic bombers. Under the assumptions of some arms-control advocates, this modernization effort would constitute an arms race and therefore represent an unnecessary escalation that should be avoided.

This is a peculiar conclusion. When both the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) and the POR were adopted in December 2010, it was widely understood that New START fully accommodated—and, in practice, endorsed—the forthcoming U.S. nuclear deterrent modernization program. Even supporters of arms control described the POR as consistent with New START. That treaty with Russia reduced deployed strategic nuclear warheads to roughly 1,700–1,800, down from the 1,700–2,200 levels established under the 2002 Moscow Treaty.

How can the retiring New START framework—now under a new administration yet retaining the same modernization elements—or any future treaty be characterized simultaneously as arms control and as an arms race? Such a conclusion requires a deft sleight of hand, one that conveniently discards or forgets much of the history of arms control itself.

First, arms control with Moscow has not necessarily been beneficial. During the 1972-77 SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) agreement and the subsequent 1979 SALT II framework with the Soviet Union, Moscow could increase its long-range strategic nuclear weapons by 600-1,200%, according to a 1983 Net Assessment of Soviet nuclear strategy. This included deploying over 3,000 high-yield, accurate warheads specifically designed to preemptively attack America’s key nuclear triad assets. This “window of vulnerability” widened dramatically during this period, leading to a sharply deteriorating strategic balance between the USA and the Soviet Union, as described by General Richard Ellis, Commander of the Strategic Air Command, in striking testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in early 1981.

Second, the U.S. must always keep in mind that Moscow has routinely cheated on every arms control agreement that it ever signed, including the SALT agreements of the 1970s.

Third, many assume that restraint works. But history is not on their side. President Reagan, not Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter, acquired and deployed Pershing II and Ground-Launched Cruise Missile missiles in Europe, which the arms control community widely opposed. Only with these deployments did the US gain the leverage to secure the elimination of all Soviet SS-20 missiles deployed in Europe and in Asia.

In December 1987, the United States and the USSR signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which eliminated thousands of SS-20 warheads. The agreement was historic in that it abolished an entire class of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. Yet even at the time, opponents of the treaty continued to advocate a nuclear freeze, opposed U.S. counter-deployments of regional nuclear weapons, and lobbied for American restraint and retrenchment—restraint that was not reciprocated by the Soviet Union.

Fourth, the START I reduction proposals, officially announced by the Reagan administration in a November 1981 address at the National Press Club, called for the first 50 percent reduction in U.S. long-range strategic nuclear forces. Ironically, when President Reagan first advanced these proposals, they were widely ridiculed by arms-control specialists, who insisted that Moscow would inevitably reject such deep cuts. Instead, the Soviet Union favored agreements like the 1972 and 1979 SALT accords, which permitted substantial growth in Soviet nuclear forces—particularly heavy, first-strike warheads—while relying on U.S. restraint.

President Reagan’s strategy of “peace through strength” ultimately turned the tables on Moscow, particularly after it was fully endorsed by the bipartisan Scowcroft Commission in its 1983 report. Moreover, Reagan’s March 1983 missile defense initiative—known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)—further pressured the Soviet leadership to enter negotiations. This approach was reinforced by Reagan’s clear-eyed understanding of the nature of the regime he confronted, articulated in his March 1983 address to the National Association of Evangelicals, in which he famously described the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.”

President Reagan—and later President George H. W. Bush—proved highly successful, with the first arms-reduction treaties, START I, adopted in January 1991 and START II in January 1993. In particular, START II represented a major breakthrough by banning multiple-warhead land-based missiles—the very Soviet force elements that had created the destabilizing “window of vulnerability” identified more than a decade earlier. By that point, after engaging in sustained economic and strategic competition with the USSR, the United States had made the continuation of the Soviet empire—and the massive military forces required to sustain it—untenable.

Years later, while the arms control community was actively working to dismantle the American-proposed missile defenses, Moscow’s Duma in 1996 rejected the START II treaty despite a plea from US Secretary of Defense Perry to ratify it. Moscow claimed ratification was “problematic” and suggested it should be “set aside.”

Members of the Duma criticized START II as favoring the United States and weakening Russia’s nuclear deterrent by requiring the elimination of MIRVed ICBMs, which they viewed as essential to maintaining parity. Supporters of ratification acknowledged these concerns but argued that Russia lacked the resources to sustain such forces. Many in the Duma also raised broader economic concerns and linked START II to U.S. missile defense plans, warning that missile defenses would further erode Russia’s deterrent once MIRVed ICBMs were eliminated.

Today, the alternative being offered to nuclear modernization—a congressionally mandated effort tied directly to the 2010 ratification of New START—is effectively unilateral disarmament. Under this approach, arms control constraints on adversaries such as Russia and China are ignored or rejected, while unilateral U.S. restraint is enthusiastically embraced.

The clearest example is a proposal advanced by Senators Sanders, Warren, and Markey, which would unilaterally reduce U.S. nuclear forces from the 800 missiles and bombers permitted under New START to just 182—a reduction of more than 77 percent. One is left to ask: where are the corresponding proposals from Beijing or Moscow? Were any such commitments even sought before advancing this plan?

Arms control requires deploying measures that the reluctant party opposes. The brothers mayhem—North Korea, Iran, China, and Russia—have no interest in nuclear restraint. They believe in the coercive use of nuclear weapons—to blackmail their geopolitical adversaries into inaction—as aptly described by the 2023 Strategic Posture Commission of the United States.

Restraint does not work. In 1991, for example, President George H. W. Bush unilaterally withdrew tens of thousands of U.S. regional, or theater, nuclear weapons. Russia did not reciprocate, despite promises to do so. Today, Russia is assessed to possess between roughly 1,900 and 4,000 such theater warheads, while the United States maintains only a few hundred gravity bombs, deployed in limited numbers in certain NATO countries—and none in the Middle East or the Indo-Pacific. Moreover, China fields hundreds of theater-range missiles capable of carrying low-yield nuclear warheads. The 2025 report to Congress on China noted that Beijing has shown little willingness to engage in nuclear risk-reduction discussions, whether bilaterally or multilaterally.

Given the minimal deterrent being proposed by Congressionally based abolitionists, there is no possibility of securing any kind of arms limits with China and Russia. With the USA having such a reduced force, these autocratic nations have no reason to pause their own massive force modernization, and it would actually embolden them to serially threaten the use of conventional or nuclear force, free from being challenged by any countervailing US nuclear military capability.

(This article was written by Adelle Nazarian, and appeared in NEWSMAX. Saudi Arabia a Fluent Capital, Logistics, and Economic Force | Newsmax.com)

There is a moment in every serious relationship when both parties stop performing for the crowd and begin speaking honestly to each other. The posturing fades, grudges lose their power. What remains is a clear recognition of interests, limits, and long-term intent.

That’s where the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia now stands.

The emerging $1 trillion economic framework between Washington and Riyadh is neither a romantic gesture nor an attempt to rehabilitate reputations or rewrite history. It’s far more durable and consequential. It reflects two systems which have grown tired of caricature and chosen instead to deal in leverage, capital, and reality.

In geopolitics, as in markets, maturity reveals itself not through rhetoric but through aligned incentives.

For Washington, the logic is straightforward. Supply chains are fragile, energy markets remain volatile, and strategic competition with China demands partners that possess not only capital, but scale and long-term ambition.

Saudi Arabia is no longer content to be flattened into a single storyline or reduced to legacy labels. It’s asserting itself as a global capital allocator, a logistics hub, and an economic force fluent in the language of the modern world.

This is not a return to old habits; it’s a recalibration. And it is unfolding in plain sight — on balance sheets, in infrastructure, and increasingly in public life.

The current U.S.-Saudi economic deepening is not about ideological conformity or symbolic alignment. It’s about interdependence. American innovation and institutional depth are converging with Saudi capital, infrastructure, and long-term planning. The result is not dependency, but durability.

If the trade framework represents the architecture of this new phase, then Riyadh Season represents its proof of execution.

Often dismissed as spectacle, Riyadh Season — which began in October and will go through March 2026 — is better understood as a live demonstration; an operational stress test of openness, investability, and global integration. The festival draws millions of visitors, hosts international concerts, sporting events, and cultural exhibitions, and transforms the Saudi capital into a functioning crossroads of commerce and culture.

This is not window dressing. It’s signaling.

That signal is inseparable from its leadership. His Excellency Turki Al-Sheikh transformed Riyadh Season from an idea into a global benchmark, proving that Saudi ambition paired with execution can reshape an entire industry. With instinct for scale and precision for delivery, he has made entertainment not just a spectacle, but a strategic language through which Saudi Arabia speaks confidently to the world.

Saudi Arabia welcomed more than 27 million international tourists in 2023, a sharp increase from pre-pandemic levels. The expatriate population now exceeds 13 million, including a growing cohort of Western professionals who are not merely visiting, but relocating.

Tourism is projected to contribute 10% of GDP by 2030, while the entertainment sector alone is expected to surpass $23 billion annually within the decade. These are not abstract ambitions; they are measurable shifts backed by capital, regulatory reform, and execution.

Crucially, Riyadh Season is not about Westernization. It’s about global legibility.

Saudi Arabia is not abandoning its identity; it’s translating it into a language that global investors, talent, and institutions can understand. This is something the United States can certainly appreciate. Mixed-gender public spaces, global brands, English as a working business language, and reforms improving foreign ownership and dispute resolution are not ideological concessions. They are economic enablers.

This evolution did not occur in a vacuum, nor is it naïve about global scrutiny. Saudi Arabia understands that headlines linger, particularly those shaped by moments that once dominated international discourse. But the Kingdom has chosen not to remain trapped in a single narrative frame. Instead, it’s moving forward through performance rather than protest, delivery rather than defensiveness. In geopolitics, relevance is earned through outcomes.

Riyadh Season also serves as the cultural gateway to a broader transformation embodied by projects such as NEOM — a large-scale experiment in urban design, clean energy, advanced manufacturing, and logistics. Together, they form a continuum under Vision 2030, which has already seen hundreds of billions committed across infrastructure, technology, and human capital.

For the United States, this matters. The partnership offers access to capital at scale, a stable anchor in a volatile region, and a counterpart willing to engage without illusions.

Saudi Arabia is not asking to be understood as a Western democracy; it’s asking to be recognized as a serious actor operating in the world as it exists.

Riyadh Season is not a party. It’s a message. And the message is that Saudi Arabia is no longer asking the world to imagine its future. It’s inviting the world to participate.

Adelle Nazarian is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Hermann Terscht and appeared in the El Debate. Hermann Tertsch – España | Thank you to Donald Trump!)

The social democratic media chorus in Spain launched from the outset to condemn the US military action that has brought about the liberation of our compatriots

Yesterday the Spaniards set foot on Spanish soil, kidnapped for one or more years in Nicolás Maduro’s dungeons until the day before. The first thing that all the Spanish authorities should have done, from King Felipe VI to the all-meaning tiny minister Albares, is to have thanked the president of the United States, Donald Trump, for having taken them out of the sordid pit in which the hitmen of the miserable drug trafficking and socialist dictatorship had put them. ally, partner and accomplice of the Spanish government of Pedro Sánchez and the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). They also had to express their gratitude to the thousands of U.S. soldiers, police and members of the DEA who risked their lives and participated in the search and capture with great success of the leader of the criminal gang that has kidnapped the Spaniards and for 25 years the entire Venezuelan nation.

What has happened in Spain, however, has been something very different from what common sense and decency recommended to us and should fill us with shame. We have seen how the head of the government, Pedro Sánchez, and then unfortunately also King Felipe spoke of our compatriots “held” in Venezuela under the Maduro dictatorship and freed by Trump. You are “held back” by a traffic jam, a flight delay, or bad weather on a trip. The Spaniards were imprisoned, kidnapped without any defense or guarantee in torture prisons. Euphemisms become worse enemies of truth than lies. And if there is one thing that Donald Trump is hated so much for in progressivism and this reign of euphemism and hypocrisy that is social democratic Europe, it is because, in addition to his will to act to create a new favorable reality for his homeland and his compatriots, there are his direct and implacable ways of saying things.

The social democratic media chorus in Spain launched from the first moment to condemn the US military action that has brought about the liberation of our compatriots. And we have reached the paroxysm of vileness with very serious insults to Venezuelans for rejoicing that Donald Trump, yes, Donald Trump and the U.S. Army, have given the initial resounding blow to begin the dismantling of the dictatorship that has tortured and murdered without pause and flooded all of Venezuela with pain and misery for a quarter of a century. “Fascist worm” is what one of the doctors of the television Chekist left calls the large colony of Venezuelan exiles in Spain, only part of the more than eight million spread around the world, fleeing the curse of socialism and organized crime. You know, the victims of socialism have no right to complain.

Stalin sent to the Gulag anyone who complained about the quality of soup in the army and Kim Jong-un executed anyone who did not applaud his tyrant enough. The Spanish public television RTVE, which competes in vileness with the television stations of Cuba or Venezuela, already dedicates practically the entire day to political propaganda programs that demonize, criminalize, defame and target all those who do not applaud the criminal and corrupt socialist government. Venezuelans are guilty, like Cubans, of not enjoying the criminal regimes that crush them, but that pay well to Spanish socialists and communists who choose talk show hosts.

The European authorities who have been waiting for decades for evolution in the socialist dictatorships of Latin America, and who therefore finance the communist mafia in Cuba and financed Nicaragua and Venezuela, have now been a week since Maduro’s capture and consider it intolerable that we do not already have an exquisite transition towards the most perfect democracy. The transition to democracy began when María Corina Machado designed with her people a formula to go despite all the impediments to elections under the dictatorship, make a prodigious mobilization and guarantee, in a miraculous operation, the possession of the electoral records. Since then, no one can doubt that criminals are criminals, usurpers are usurpers and drug traffickers cannot hide behind a presidential institution.

But the world remained the same until Trump confirmed what was already true in his first term: that Venezuela with drug traffickers, money laundering, Chinese agents, Russian military, Islamist militants of Hezbollah and the Iranian guard, plus all the mercenaries of the worst kind, posed a threat to the security of the United States. And that is infecting the entire subcontinent from its total command in Cuba with Mexico, Colombia and Brazil as very dangerous exponents. Thanks to this, democracy and freedom will return, not tomorrow or the day after, to Venezuela. Delcy Rodríguez, with the gun to her temple of all the positions that await her in New York, if she does not serve as a submissive in charge of disarming her comrades, will open all the necessary resources for the United States to control and put an end to those omnipresent mafias in the structures of the State and outside them.

And the heroic María Corina and the democrats will begin to have their legitimate role as protagonists of the political life and future of Venezuela when the enemies of everything they mean do not have the capacity to set the country on fire. What is Trump interested in about oil? Thank goodness. That way neither the Chinese, the Russians nor the Iranians will have it and it will serve, as has happened in the past, for Americans and Venezuelans to make Venezuela a prosperous, rich and happy country.

Those who ask for full sovereignty and full democracy today and now in Venezuela have not asked for it in 25 years. They were not in a hurry. Thanks to María Corina Machado and thanks to Donald Trump, Venezuela will be democratic much sooner than those arrogant European politicians who are destroying democracies in their own countries with increasing censorship and social engineering believe.

The good news is that, apart from Trump in the US, there are many forces in the West determined to end the euphemisms and moral misery of cowardice. Thus, Vox has just denounced Rodríguez Zapatero in the National Court for his collaboration with Maduro’s criminal regime. And Zapatero’s victims have begun to speak. Soon we will have, apart from the cases that are already being investigated in the United States, documents and evidence of all the links of corruption and complicity between that gang of murderers in Caracas and the organized crime gang that governs in Spain.

Very good things are happening. And we have Donald Trump to thank. The criminal regime of Islamist clerics in Tehran may also fall these days. Also with a lot of help from Israel and Trump. It’s a good start to 2026. Just seeing the faces, the cries and the tears of the Spanish leftist scoundrel confirms it.

Hermann Terscht is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Adelle Nazarian and appeared in The Western Journal. When Rumor Becomes a Death Sentence: Bangladesh’s Crisis and the Test for Democratic Leadership)

The fatal beating, lynching, and burning of Bangladeshi Hindu Dipu Chandra Das, followed days later by the mob killing of fellow Hindu Amrit Mondal, was not spontaneous violence. It was a failure of the state: clear, deliberate, and lethal.

Dipu was a 25-year-old garment worker, a husband, a father, and the sole provider for his family, including two elderly parents, one disabled. Above all, he was a Hindu in a Muslim-majority country, a member of a vulnerable minority. His life mattered. And the state failed him.

On December 18, a rumor spread that Dipu had spoken negatively about Islam. There is no verified evidence that he did. What is verified is that he begged the police for protection and was instead handed over to an Islamist mob.

He was beaten to death, stripped naked, tied to a tree, and burned along the Dhaka-Mymensingh highway, in full public view. This did not happen despite the police. It happened because they allowed it.

The mob killed Dipu because they did not need proof. That is the danger of blasphemy-driven violence: When rumor replaces evidence, fear replaces law.

Dipu Chandra Das, a hindu, was brutaIIy lynch*d and burnt aIive in Bangladesh.

Dipu Chandra Das was a young garment factory worker who lived in the area as a tenant. He was accused of blasphemy and tied to a tree where they bur*t him to dea*h.

No formal case has been… pic.twitter.com/lfqxzHyW8c

— Shubham Sharma (@Shubham_fd) December 19, 2025

Days later, Amrit Mondal was beaten to death. Authorities rushed to downplay communal motives, but pattern matters more than intent. Two Hindu men. Two public killings. Two mobs. Two state failures.

That is not a coincidence. It is a trajectory.

There is no confirmed evidence that Dipu’s and Amrit’s killers were formal members of a single political organization, and that distinction matters legally.

But it does not erase reality. Both killings bear the hallmarks of Islamist mob violence: the weaponization of accusation, the targeting of minorities, and the social permission to kill without consequence.

This is how plausible deniability works. Leaders remain insulated while mobs do the dirty work.

Bangladesh has seen this before. In 1971, at least 2.8 million Hindus were massacred by the Pakistani Army and allied Islamist forces in less than a year.

That trauma never fully healed. It merely went dormant, resurfacing whenever political authority weakens and extremist actors sense opportunity.

In 2022, the U.S. Congress introduced House Resolution 1430, “Recognizing the Bangladesh Genocide of 1971,” a resolution seeking to formally recognize those atrocities as genocide and crimes against humanity. The effort that stalled legislatively, even as international genocide scholars officially affirmed that designation in 2023. That opportunity is now visible.

The return of Tarique Rahman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party after roughly 16 years in exile is not a neutral political development. It signals the reactivation of old power networks at a moment of institutional fragility.

His arrival ahead of the upcoming elections coincides not with stabilization, but with a surge in street-level intimidation, communal violence, and state paralysis. And it brings with it the likelihood that Bangladesh will soon be run by the radical Jamaat-e-Islami, which means no minorities will be safe.

Even if the BNP gains ground, Tarique Rahman’s leadership from exile leaves him ill-positioned to govern or unify the country.

That weakness creates an opening for Jamaat-e-Islami to gain outsized influence through coalition politics, advancing Islamist priorities without winning outright.

The danger is not a sudden takeover, but the quiet erosion of Bangladesh’s secular foundations from within the government.

Fear is the factor that shapes elections in fragile democracies. When minorities are publicly brutalized, and the state hesitates, a message is sent about who is protected and who is expendable.

For India, this is not merely a human-rights crisis. It is a strategic warning. Bangladesh sits on India’s eastern flank, and when the rule of law collapses there, India feels it first through instability, radicalization, and refugee pressure.

Anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh does not exist in isolation. It feeds directly into India’s internal security calculus, particularly in border regions already vulnerable to extremist Islamist influence.

For years, New Delhi invested heavily in a stable, secular Bangladesh as a regional partner, one that stood in contrast to Pakistan’s chronic instability and Afghanistan’s descent into Islamist rule.

The ousting of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina placed that assumption in jeopardy. What India is now witnessing is not simply a political transition, but the early signs of a dangerous drift toward religious majoritarianism, institutional erosion, and extremist accommodation.

In a recent interview with New India Abroad, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina underscored why her leadership had helped make Bangladesh a more stable and prosperous nation.

Reflecting on her departure amid escalating unrest, she stated, “My instinct has always been to protect our country and our citizens, and it was not an easy decision to leave while my country erupted into lawlessness. I regret that I was compelled to leave, but it was a decision I took to minimize any further loss of life, and to ensure the safety of people around me.”

She went on to outline the conditions necessary for her return, emphasizing that legitimacy must rest on law, not force.

“For me to return, Bangladesh must restore constitutional governance and the rule of law,” she wrote. “This means lifting the unlawful ban on the Awami League, releasing political prisoners detained on fabricated charges, and holding genuinely free elections. You cannot claim democratic legitimacy while banning the party elected nine times by the people.”

The killings of Dipu Chandra Das and Amrit Mondal are not isolated crimes. They are indicators. With elections approaching and authority fragmented, Islamist street power is testing how far it can go. And the answer they are giving is far enough.

That erosion of trust places responsibility on the United States as well. On Dec. 28, the U.S. State Department issued a statement condemning the killings and urging Bangladesh to protect religious minorities and uphold the rule of law.

The statement was necessary. It was correct. And it now requires tangible follow-through.

For generations, America has claimed the mantle of democracy, pluralism, and freedom of belief. Those ideals only retain meaning when defended under pressure. Jamaat-e-Islami and groups associated with them must be actioned accordingly.

Instability does not begin with coups or wars, but with the normalization of violence against the defenseless.

When mobs replace courts, democracy becomes theater. When the state fails to protect its weakest citizens, it signals to extremists that the cost of violence is low.

These were not random deaths. They were warnings.

India is watching because it must. The United States is watching because it still has the capacity and the responsibility to stand for justice at a moment when the meaning of human rights is being challenged and steadily eroded.

Adelle Nazarian is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.