Trip the Beltway Fantastic With Kelley Vlahos and Friends

The Strait of Hormuz reopens, oil drops, and the headlines move on. We slow the tape and ask the uncomfortable question: if things can snap back this fast, why did we get pushed into the crisis in the first place?

We’re joined by Dr. Ron Paul, constitutionalist, former congressman, and founder of the Ron Paul Institute and host of The Liberty Report. He argues that the Iran war is a textbook example of intervention gone wrong: an empire mindset that manufactures emergencies, spends lives and money, and then demands applause for a partial re...

A deadline over the Strait of Hormuz, a presidential post warning a “civilization” could be erased, and growing chatter about “other tools” in the toolbox. That combination isn’t just headline noise. It’s a live test of escalation control, deterrence credibility, and how quickly a war can shift from an air campaign into something far harder to stop.

We’re joined by Dr. Jennifer Kavanagh, a military analyst at Defense Priorities, to pressure-test the claims coming out of Washington and to separate battlefield spin from strategic reality. We dig into what the F-15 shootdown and...

“Boots on the ground” gets tossed around like a flex. We wanted to slow that down and ask the unglamorous questions that decide whether wars spiral: What’s the strategic objective? What force actually shows up? How do you resupply, evacuate wounded, and hold terrain while drones and ballistic missiles hunt everything that emits a signal?

Marine veteran and military analyst Jim Webb joins us to break down why the Strait of Hormuz is not just a map feature but a lever Iran has built strategy around for decades. We talk about the reality behind...

War doesn’t just start with missiles. Sometimes it starts with who gets picked to “do the talks” and what they tell the president afterward. We sit down with Branko Marcetic , staff writer at Jacobin and a contributor to Responsible Statecraft, to unpack his reporting on Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and their outsized role in the diplomatic track that collapsed into the Iran war. We get specific about why nuclear negotiations demand technical fluency, why gaps in expertise can be fatal, and how public messaging can harden a pro-war storyline before anyone can challenge it.

We...

After months of what seemed to be a stalled if not utterly failing Trump effort to end the Ukraine War, developments on this front have been hurtling at a breakneck speed this week. As of Tuesday there was still an expectation that the President might be able to announce something big as America’s turkeys and pumpkin pies were landing on groaning holiday tables this Thursday.

To say there is a lot to do before such an event could take place is an understatement. First, the backlash against Trump’s 28-point peace plan has been swift and vitr...

This week marked one month since Donald Trump got both Hamas and Israel to agree to a 20-point peace plan for Gaza. Phase one was supposed to cease the fighting, see the exchange of hostages, flood the Strip with aid, and begin the process of Israel withdrawing its troops from Gaza.

By all accounts it’s not going so well. While the exchanges of live and dead hostages continue, the aid is not getting into the war- and famine-plagued population, which is now suffering from conditions not heard of since the turn of the last century, like sc...

This week the U.S. military buildup off the coast of Venezuela continued, with two B-1 bombers flying as close to land as any have come in previous flights, according to Air & Space Force Magazine. This is a transparent  “show of force” as the B-1s did not turn off their transponders, wanting everyone, especially Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, to know exactly where they are. The bombers are capable of carrying cruise missiles and guided bombs that could be used in possible strikes on land and aren’t the first buzzing the area in recent weeks.

They certain...

On Monday President Trump signed an agreement with Arab leaders that has been called a “miracle” and “historic.” It has largely (so far) paused the Israeli onslaught in the Gaza strip and served to release the remaining live Israeli hostages held by Hamas and upwards of 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Before attending the signing ceremony in Egypt, Trump was feted in triumph by Israeli officials at the Knesset. Aside from bestowing on him the moniker “President of Peace” they said he would be remembered “as a giant of Jewish history, one for whom we must look back two and a...

This week Secretary of State Pete Hegseth called every single admiral and general to Virginia where the Pentagon is located for a meeting. It turned out to be a pair of speeches from Hegseth and President Donald Trump about what they are declaring to be the new American military era.

In his own words, Hegseth described it as “no more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for war fighters.” 

“We are warriors. We are purpose built, not for fair weather, blue skies or calm seas. We're built to load...

The Trump Administration reportedly has a plan to reconstruct Gaza into a Riviera on the Mediterranean. What does that mean? According to reports, President Trump, with the help of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner, have laid out details for the total real estate redevelopment of the war torn Gaza Strip. This of course would require the relocation of the two million people, or what is left of the Palestinians after two years of war, who live there.

According to the Washington Post this week, it is euphemistically called th...

The big Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska, followed by the extraordinary convocation of European leaders, along with Ukrainian President Zelensky and Trump’s team on Monday at the White House, signaled that something is finally happening. The War in Ukraine may be finally coming to an end.

Of course the fighting on the battlefield hasn’t stopped and all parties appear to acknowledge that an immediate ceasefire is not in the cards, at least not until some sort of framework with terms can be sealed. There is also a broad recognition that there will have to be some terr...

Hello and welcome to Trip the Beltway Fantastic. On July 17, the only Catholic church in Gaza - the Holy Family Catholic Church – was hit by Israeli fire, killing three, wounding scores of others including the parish priest. Israel says it was a mistake,  a stray tank shelling, igniting a firestorm particularly among American Catholics and Christians, many who had already been shifting support away from Israel on the issue of Gaza.

Catholics including Sohrab Ahmari, who joins us here today, jumped on comments by people like Luke Moon of the Catholic Philos Project, who  lashed out against crit...

According to the UN this week, some 1054 civilians have been killed trying to get food in Gaza since May. Some 766 of them were killed at food distribution points operated by the Global Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is backed by the U.S. and Israel and uses private military contractors for security. 

These contractors are beginning to come forward with horror stories about their colleagues using live ammunition, stun grenades, and pepper spray in crowd control and may be responsible for shooting civilians. This is vehemently denied by the GHF and the American contracting companies — Safe Reach Solutions and...

The Trump administration is reeling from a potential disaster but one of its own making. 

After months of roiling criticism over DOGE cuts and deportations, Trump has found himself in a situation in which his loyal base is revolting over his refusal to release the Epstein files. Not only that, his administration — including Attorney General Pam Bondi — has gone from saying an infamous Epstein client list does not exist, to asserting the files themselves were “created” by President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and that there is essentially “nothing to see here” but more left-wing attacks whipping up against hi...

As the West focuses on and indulges Israel’s wars in the Middle East, U.S. security policy toward China, supposedly the ‘pacing threat’ , seems neglected. Is that such a bad thing?

One of the most interesting threads to come out of the last six months of new Trump foreign policy is that China has not been the focus, other than a tariff war which as of this writing, does not appear to have blown up in the catastrophic ways predicted in the press, at least not yet. While Trump has been perceived as “bullying” other countries into not d...

News is moving so rapidly in the Middle East right now. Israel launched strikes against Iran on June 13, the Iranians have been retaliating in kind, and then the U.S. jumps in with its own strikes against Iran’s nuclear program on June 21. On Monday the Iranians engaged in limited retaliatory strikes on the U.S. military base in Qatar and by the end of the day Trump announced a ceasefire which was barely holding Tuesday morning.

Wow, my head is spinning. I am lucky to have Retired Col. Douglas Magregor here to sort this all out fo...

Ukraine’s attacks on Russia bases and aircraft on June 1 has sent the media and Ukraine’s supporters in Congress and Europe into a flurry of triumphal metaphors and hyperbole, from “David and Goliath” to “daring”, “stunning”, “audacious” and one “bad-ass” operation. 

Ukrainian military officials said 41 Russian aircraft were hit, including strategic bombers and surveillance planes, with some destroyed and others damaged. This unfortunately has unleashed a week of attacks on both sides, but the most fierce from Russia, which over the course of Monday and Tuesday, launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Kviv, Karkhiv, and Odessa, hitting civilian...

Just before Memorial Day on Friday the Trump administration let go scores of staff from the National Security Council. The usual howling from the media and foreign policy establishmentarians ensued, but the Trump administration was signaling his intent to do this even during his first term. His point: that over the years — particularly in the Bush I and Obama administrations — the NSC has not only gotten bloated and unwieldy, but for President Trump in particular having much of the career staff burrowed in from the largely centrist/liberal foreign policy establishment, it was posing a real obstacle to his own...

This last week has been dizzying when it comes to Middle East news. As we speak the President is in the region and has already made a number of announcements regarding a massive arms deal for Saudi Arabia and another for Qatar. He announced lifting sanctions on Syria and even met with Ahmed al-Sharaa, the new president of Syria, the first time leaders from the two countries have met in 25 years.

Meanwhile, Trump has promised a huge announcement on Gaza (which as of this recording we have yet to hear) and his administration is engaged in ongoing...

Trump administration has worked doggedly to follow through on its promise to end the war. President Trump started talks with Moscow, which didn’t make the Ukrainians and the EU happy. He then worked to bring Zelensky into the fold after some tense moments in the Oval Office.

Trump then tried to bring about a ceasefire, which really didn’t work as both sides blamed each other for not keeping it. Meanwhile, Europe is seemingly determined to undermine all of it by continuing to call for more weapons and aid to Ukraine, despite all evidence on the grou...

Within just a year we have gone from government censorship of so-called disinformation, brought on by reactionary responses to COVID and Russia-gate, to foreign students literally being abducted off the streets and thrown into detention centers, without charge, for having the wrong attitudes (whether in op-eds, campus protests, or in the case of Badar Khan Suri, a father-in-law problem) about the Israeli government and the war in Gaza. 

The Trump administration has called this a threat to “US foreign policy” and claims the right to throw these scholars and students out of the country under the Immigration and N...

To say that the European debate over the war in Ukraine — at least in the elite halls of government, academia and the professional classes — is virtually non-existent, might be an understatement. For all of the grousing my friends in the realism and restraint world have done about the hive-mind thinking about Russia and the war since the 2022, it is nothing like the conformist strictures that exists in the European capitals of Brussels, UK, France, Sweden, Germany and elsewhere in the so-called transatlantic community.

In recent months, as Trump has staked out a new direction for the U.S. p...

We are into the second week of U.S. airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. U.S. warplanes have targeted Houthi infrastructure, weapons depots and leadership in the capital city of Sana’a as well as other towns and villages in northern Yemen, which have invariably caused civilian injury and death, though the actual numbers are hard to pin down.

Not surprisingly, the Houthis have responded with their own attacks against U.S. warships in the Red Sea. Their missiles have been intercepted, but — like the last 17 months — the constant volley of missiles has kept the American Navy b...

“We Live in a Fascist Dictatorship”

“Mad King Trump’s Tariff Disaster”

“Trump’s neofascism is here now. Here are 10 things you can do to resist”

“A Guide to Trump’s Fascist Presidency — From Ignoring Judge to Erasing History”

“Fit for a king? Trump’s moves challenge world order and U.S. bureaucracy.”

These are all headlines I found in five minutes this morning Googling “Trump fascist“ “Trump fascism” “Trump king” and “Is Trump a monarch?”

For weeks, the legacy media and mostly the left side of the commentariat has been declaring the end of...

At the end February, newly minted Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth fired his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General CQ Brown, who was an appointee of President Biden and had been on the job 15 months. Hegseth said Brown, a career Air Force officer, was “honorable” but “not the right man for the moment,” and said the replacements of five other three- and four-stars were “a reflection of the president wanting the right people around him to execute the national security approach we want to take.”

Among the myriad criticisms about these firings is that Trump is not repla...

This past weekend at the Munich Security Conference it would be an understatement to say that sparks were flying, or even fireworks. More like bombs going off. It started last week with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegeth saying that Ukraine would not be given membership in NATO in any peace agreement and said NATO’s European members would have to provide the lion’s share of funding for their defense. On the sidelines, the U.S. set the stage for a direct meeting with Russia in Saudi Arabia, which took place Tuesday, leaving Europe and Ukraine out. The BBC came...

One of the most extraordinary sidebar stories of the 2024 election has been the complete implosion of mainstream media. Of course mainstream news or more exactly, legacy media, was in its death throes long before Trump won in November. The major network news, cable news, the newspapers of record — the Washington Post, the New York Times — NPR radio — all had been bleeding viewers and listeners to varying degrees, up and down, for years. The rise of social media, in particular podcasts, You Tube, and TikTok, were becoming the go to for new consumption and that reached an apotheosis in the electi...

If you have been paying any attention to international politics over the last four years you have no doubt picked up on the phrase “Global South” relating to a host of middle and small powers ranging from South Africa and Indonesia, Brazil to the Pacific Islands and their growing influence on the geopolitical stage. These nations have emerged as opposition to Western policies on Ukraine and Israel, they have raised the specter of alternative financial systems, even de-dollarization, to get around sanctions and the iron grip of the West in international markets and trade. They have asserted themselves at the...

Last week there was a very brief moment in which it looked like the newly inaugurated President Trump was finally going to allow the declassification of all the files relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. This has been decades in the waiting, and he had said clearly in interviews during the campaign and after his election that he was going to immediately release these records – of which there are around 3,000 today sitting in the National Archives and Records Administration In fact, in a Washington rally the night before his inauguration, Trump declared his administration will “reve...

Today we commemorate the inauguration of the 47th president, Donald Trump, after the longest and most tumultuous year in recent memory in terms of politics and foreign policy. The results of the 2024 election in November, largely predicted by my two guests today, were still a surprise in a way that no one could have guessed what a seismic shift there would be in the political and social landscape afterwards. 

Where the 2016 election of Donald Trump brought on a wave of protest including the landmark women’s march, which brought over 450k demonstrators to the Nation’s Capitol ahead...

The fall of Bashar Assad in Syria has led to grave uncertainties — both in the geopolitical situation there, and in the day-to-day running of the country, which has suffered under civil war for 14 years. 

The new governing authority under HTS is looking for the lifting of international sanctions so it can start rebuilding the country after over a decade of civil war. Also, questions remain over whether or not this new governing authority will be tolerant of the minorities in Syria, which include the Allawites, Christians and Druze peoples. But there are already reports of intermittent attacks on...

For the Palestinians in Israel, conditions keep getting worse. In Gaza, the official death toll is now over 45,000, the vast majority civilians. This cannot take into account bodies still under the rubble, which covers the landscape of the two-mile strip. Thousands are displaced and without food, orphaned, and struggling for healthcare as none of the hospitals in Gaza are working at full capacity today. 

In the West Bank, the situation is reaching a critical juncture. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far right government is now talking openly about fully annexing the territory. Right now there are some 670,000 Jew...

This week we have seen the utter collapse of the Assad regime and the Baathist political ideology in Syria. This follows a year of crisis and turmoil in the Middle East and absolute uncertainty in the days ahead as power centers completely shift and foreign militaries, including the Turks, Israel, and the U.S. race to take advantage of the power vacuum and chaos that remains. 

This is all happening as a new administration is poised to take over in January. Trump’s nominees for foreign policy and national security are certainly a mixed bag...

A week ago Syrian Sunni rebels under the banner of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or HTS launched a surprise attack on the government forces of President Bashar al-Assad, capturing over the last week most of the strategic provinces of Aleppo and Idlib, which had been at the heart of the ISIS insurgency during the early years of the Syrian Civil War. The timing is auspicious : Assad’s key allies — Russia, Iran and Hezbollah have been seriously distracted and/or weakened over the last year.

Most specifically, Hezbollah had just signed a ceasefire with Israel days before the HTS atta...

On Wednesday the US embassy in Kyiv issued a rare, urgent warning that Russia might launch a “a significant air attack.” The embassy was closed and employees were told to shelter in place. Officials did not provide any specific information about threats to the building, and air raids were sounding for most of the county due to incoming drone attacks from Russia.

The warnings come just days after the Biden administration gave permission to Ukraine to use U.S. long-range missiles, specifically Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMs, to attack inside Russia. This is the latest in a st...

It’s been an incredible roller coaster ride and it’s only been a week since the election, with Donald Trump winning both the popular and electoral vote in what he and his supporters are calling a mandate for their side. Where does this leave foreign policy and national security? After what was considered a “win” for realism and restraint last weekend, Trump announced that he would not be asking uber-hawks Michael Pompeo or Nikki Haley to join his administration. But not but a day afterward, the President-elect confirmed that he has appointed Elise Stefanik as UN Ambassador. 

Stefani...

We are just days away from the presidential election, in fact we are entering the final weekend. Interestingly, Donald Trump appears to have seized on all of Kamala Harris’s weaknesses on foreign policy — particularly the hell she has been taking from her left flank over Gaza — to try and peel off voters in key swing states including Michigan and Wisconsin, which we know have big Muslim-American populations.

So while Kamala Harris has been campaigning with neoconservative Liz Cheney, blowing the minds of her progressive base, many of whom no doubt see the looming face of Dick Cheney...

We talk a lot about the military industrial complex here but a growing threat to our liberty is the disinformation/misinformation industrial complex, or what our next guest Jim Bovard and others call the Censorship Industrial Complex. 

One could say this began shortly before the 2016 election when the Obama administration began investigating the Donald Trump campaign for links to the Russians. When Trump was elected, the Democrats, including the losing candidate Hillary Clinton, accused the Russians of colluding with Donald Trump to win. Aside from cyberhacking, the Russians were accused of manipulating our own social media to m...

The war in Gaza continues today with scores of Palestinians dead, mostly from airstrikes on shelters and schools and neighborhoods outside hospitals. The displaced have nowhere else to go. In the meantime, the Israeli military has expanded its bombing and ground campaign into Lebanon, with more than 1400 dead and a million displaced since mid-September. 

A new generation of reporters and editors at Antiwar.com, which has been challenging U.S. national security policy and militarism since the Bosnia War, has been working non-stop to provide readers with comprehensive, independent news on Israel’s war on Gaza and now...

In the last two weeks we have witnessed a wave of aggressive tactics from Israel that have finally expanded the war in Gaza beyond the borders of the Gaza strip and West Bank and now into neighboring Lebanon, Yemen and possibly Iran. 

We have seen Israel redefine terror tactics by simultaneously blowing up pagers connected to Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, killing scores and injuring thousands. They have assassinated top Hezbollah leaders, including Hassan Naasrallah. They have invaded Lebanon on the ground, while pounding the country with unrelenting airstrikes, including central Beirut overnight on Thursday. Over 1400 Lebanese have b...