{"id":4065,"date":"2026-08-03T12:38:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T12:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=4065"},"modified":"2026-08-03T12:38:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T12:38:16","slug":"nuclear-war-of-the-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=4065","title":{"rendered":"Nuclear war of the mind"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The progressive Left, and its media and podcasts, keep invoking the likelihood of \u201cnuclear escalation\u201d in Eurasia, because they can\u2019t emotionally accept a simple and practical solution: surrender<\/em> by Iran and Ukraine. To them, both countries are symbols of defiance, and champions against the object of their contempt: the West and empire.<\/p>\n

Read more The Democrats\u2019 Inflation \u2018Reduction\u2019 Act made healthcare more expensive<\/a><\/p>\n

Psychologists call this \u201ccognitive dissonance.\u201d They won\u2019t accept the reality of an Iran and Ukraine defeat, so instead, they latch onto an illusion of more war because this lets them avoid hard facts that make their dissonance worse: Iran cannot win, and Ukraine is finished.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Surrender and settlement solve the escalation problem cold.<\/p>\n

So why can\u2019t the progressive global left, and its Iranian and Ukraine sympathizers, intellectually process this reality?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

One reason<\/em> is political partisanship, because surrender by Iran means that President Trump is successful.\u00a0\u00a0It is cognitive dissonance by the political left: they want peace, but will accept war if they believe it can lead to domestic political retribution<\/em>. As the left has already shown in the U.S., civil violence, legal terror and property destruction is their political cause.<\/p>\n

In Ukraine\u2019s case, it is helpful to ask why it was even selected for proxy purposes in the first place. Why Ukraine?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a simple reason: its corruption and disorganization lend itself to manipulation.\u00a0\u00a0No such proxy actions, including regime change, could have been accomplished with other Russian border states such as Belarus, or even the Baltic states. Mongolia or Kazakhstan wouldn\u2019t work either, and the EU and U.K. don’t understand the larger East anyway; it is too alien and removed from their understanding and experience. Even Poland is difficult to fully destabilize and appropriate, despite its strong aversion to all things Russian.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

When I was a young businessman working in Eastern Europe and Russia in the telecommunications and aerospace industries, our larger U.S. corporate management put a firm \u201cNo\u201d (and “Nyet”) on any investments or joint ventures in Ukraine.\u00a0\u00a0That was the 1990s.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Things have only gotten worse since then, so it seems prudent in retrospect. This corporate risk decision wasn’t due to a weak appetite for commercial risk and opportunity: After spending several months in Kiev, it became clear that Ukraine was unusually corrupt, and simply did not possess or have control of working government institutions, and a legal, banking, and regulatory infrastructure that could act as a reliable counter-party in business projects. Nor did it appear to have any interest in establishing them<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Iran doesn\u2019t really either, and we weren\u2019t even welcomed there. Both were undeveloped and hostile.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So that brings up why multiple media sources, including alternative podcasts which saturate modern news opinion, can\u2019t get their arms around two simple realities of current global conflict: both Ukraine and Iran need to surrender because neither possesses the resources and institutions to prevail, or even consolidate any imaginary victory<\/em>. Moreover, they are each unwilling and incapable of acting as regional leaders, so they are, therefore, not sources of regional stability.\u00a0\u00a0They are guarantors of regional instability<\/em>.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Too much media dialogue is being drawn into a naive and limited framework where ideology, emotion and moralizing are replacing Realpolitik.\u00a0\u00a0Their language centers around three constantly repeated terms: \u201cescalation ladder,\u201d \u201cU.S. defeat\u201d and \u201cthe nuclear option.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Trump speaks loudly and carries a huge stick<\/a><\/p>\n

Rarely if ever is the term \u201ctotal surrender\u201d ever invoked.<\/em><\/p>\n

Why? The second reason<\/em> is because the Iran war, and the Ukraine war, are both seen by the progressive left as moral symbols that serve to confirm their own biases against the U.S., Israel and the larger West. This includes seeing Russia and China as rising powers who are just biding their time until they challenge the liberal left\u2019s foes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEscalation\u201d doctrine, in reality, appeals to their feelings about retribution against Western supremacy, even though they will admit that such escalation could lead to nuclear detonation, and once that happens, a series of automatic responses are \u201cpre-programmed.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one wins a mutual nuclear exchange and there is no coherent first strike doctrine.<\/p>\n

But no matter: the Left can\u2019t process that reality either — nor that unconditional surrender by Iran and Ukraine makes this all moot.<\/em><\/p>\n

There is no way that Iran will ever prevail against the combined powers, and determination, of joint U.S.-Israel\u00a0operations.\u00a0\u00a0Indeed, with a rational and competent government in Iran, and in the Ukraine territory (I say \u201cterritory\u201d because Russia cannot be deterred from ultimately controlling it), an eventual Middle East federalism makes sense, while Ukraine needs Russia if only for a competent government.<\/p>\n

The three major superpowers are capable of leading that kind of eventual accord because their underlying economic model of capitalism, a model adapted even in China, and in Russia, puts trade and development ultimately ahead of war.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When progressives ruminate about escalation, and when they fantasize about an Iranian or Ukraine victory, they are in reality indulging a larger \u201cunderdog\u201d fantasy of an ideological \u201cBolshevik\u201d utopia by revolutionary uprising and socialism.\u00a0\u00a0As the Soviet Union and China can attest, that only comes about through violence, and ends in dictatorship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ironically, the 1979 Iranian revolution proves the same thing, while Ukraine shows what happens when a corrupt independent state is for sale.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Matthew G. Andersson is a former aerospace CEO and has worked in the Former Soviet Union.\u00a0\u00a0He has testified before the U.S. Senate and has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, the National Academies of Science, and is a graduate of the University of Chicago.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Read more Iran And Russia: Ripe For A Cascading Failure?<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: Pixabay \/\/ Pixabay Content License<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The progressive Left, and its media and podcasts, keep invoking the likelihood of \u201cnuclear escalation\u201d in Eurasia, because they can\u2019t emotionally accept a simple and practical solution: surrender by Iran and Ukraine. To them, both countries are symbols of defiance, and champions against the object of their contempt: the West and empire. Read more The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[1647],"class_list":["post-4065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foreign-policy","category-iran","tag-related-topics-iran-ukraine-war-leftists"],"yoast_head":"\nNuclear war of the mind - Interstate Logistics Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=4065\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Nuclear war of the mind - Interstate Logistics Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The progressive Left, and its media and podcasts, keep invoking the likelihood of \u201cnuclear escalation\u201d in Eurasia, because they can\u2019t emotionally accept a simple and practical solution: surrender by Iran and Ukraine. 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