EU expected to lobby member states to give Patriot interceptors to Ukraine

Copyright AP

By Angela Skujins

Published on 31/08/2026 - EURONEWS

Ukraine is running out of Patriot interceptors to shoot down Russian missiles and other airborne threats. The EU executive is expected to put pressure on Mediterranean nations, like Greece and Spain, to give theirs up at a defence meeting on Tuesday.

European countries that still hold significant stocks of interceptor missiles are expected to face pressure from the European Commission to transfer them to Ukraine, as Kyiv’s need for air-defence systems grows increasingly urgent, EU officials told Euronews.

Spain and Greece, in particular, are expected to come under pressure at a defence meeting on Tuesday in County Wicklow, Ireland, to provide some of their stocks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late August that deliveries of Patriot interceptors had declined even as Russian missile attacks on Ukraine intensified. He said Kyiv needs an estimated 300 interceptors to fend off what is already shaping up to be a bitter winter battling another year of Russia's full-scale invasion.

The war with Iran has forced the US to draw heavily on its own Patriot reserves, shrinking the pool of interceptors available to replenish allies — including Ukraine — at precisely the moment Kyiv needs more.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said earlier this year Madrid pledged to donate five Patriot missiles to Ukraine amid the shortage. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Athens has “resisted” pressure to transfer any of its six Patriot batteries to the war-torn nation in the past. He argued they are critical for defending the country’s own airspace.

One EU diplomat speaking to Euronews on condition of anonymity, due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the issue of Madrid and Athens keeping a tight grip on their Patriot interceptors is not new. But the issue is gaining pace with Zelenskyy voicing louder requests for interceptors, with the air defence system proving to be the “debate of the summer”, they said.

The European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU's diplomatic arm, is currently speaking with Japan and South Korea to convince them to share some of their stocks with Ukraine.

However, diplomats are wary that potential tensions with China are due to limit how much the two Asian countries are willing to share. Greece may also be reluctant to draw down its stockpile amid rising tensions with Turkey in recent months.

Three EU diplomats agreed that Ukraine’s shortage of Patriot interceptors is a “big issue” with broader questions about how to fill the gap. “What this will look like, I am not sure,” one EU diplomat said, adding that Tuesday's meeting is informal and therefore not expected to produce any formal conclusions.

The effectiveness of Europe’s own defences, particularly in the wake of a series of hybrid threats, is also expected to be a key focus of the talks.

Moldova, an EU candidate country, was recently rocked by a series of drone incursions. Five unmanned aerial vehicles entered the country’s airspace on 27 August, with the president Maia Sandu offering a defiant statement in response.

The meeting comes after media reports also reveal the director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, embarked on a secret trip to Moscow.

In the wake of the visit, which reportedly centred on warning the Kremlin against any form of aggression towards Baltic nations, various leaders from the region have insisted their threat assessments of a Russian attack on Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania remains the same.

The former president of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, went so far as to tell Euronews he is sceptical that Ratcliffe was dispatched to warn Russia against escalation. He argued that Washington remains more concerned about Iran

Meanwhile, one European Commission official revealed to Euronews that Kyiv is mulling whether to use the next funding envelope of the €90 billion support loan to purchase anti-ballistic systems, which could either be Patriots or the Franco-Italian version, the SAMP/T NG system.

To find other ways of plugging Ukraine’s anti-ballistic gap, the EU executive recently rubber-stamped a €6.1 billion defence procurement to supply the country with air and missile defence systems, missiles, ammunition and radars.

Russia-Ukraine War: Frozen Front, Burning Hinterland – Analysis

A Ukrainian soldier digs a trench. Photo Credit: Ukraine Defense Ministry

August 30, 2026

 Observer Research Foundation

By Nandan Unnikrishnan and Aleksei Zakharov

Key Takeaways:

After four-and-a-half years, the authors say the 2025 “Anchorage” talks are dead and the front is barely moving: Russia still wants all of Donbas, claims on Kostiantynivka are disputed, and drones have made big assaults rare.

A late-June 40-day Ukrainian deep-strike campaign hit Crimea supply lines, distant refineries (Omsk is cited), warehouses, and Black Sea shipping; Russia answered with ports, grain terminals, petrol stations, and Kyiv-area raids as interceptor stocks run short.

The predicted endgame is a ceasefire on the line of contact, a heavily armed Ukraine outside NATO, and a fragile European security deal—only after both sides decide more fighting no longer pays.

There appears to be no endgame in sight after four-and-a-half years of fighting in Ukraine, with peace negotiations making no progress in 2026. If anything, with both Russia and Ukraine escalating strikes on energy facilities, logistics infrastructure, warehouses, as well as ports and vessels in the Black Sea, a protracted war looks increasingly likely.

The so-called “Anchorage formula”, or, as the Russians call it, “the spirit of Anchorage”, referring to the understandings Russia claims were reached at the 2025 Trump–Putin summit in Alaska, is firmly dead, while a new baseline for negotiations remains undefined. Both Moscow and Kyiv remain confident that they can sustain the war for several more months and gain the upper hand in negotiations through military pressure. So far, however, the escalation has produced no tangible results. Rather, it is creating a more dangerous situation in which the war could spill over into new territories and draw in new actors and domains.

A Stalled Battlefield

The dynamics across the line of contact have not seriously shifted over the past several months. Russian armed forces continue to inch forward but with little to suggest that Moscow will achieve its military goals anytime soon. Russia’s main objective remains the capture of the entire Donbas region, which still requires seizing some of the most heavily fortified settlements in Donetsk oblast. Even though Russian forward-deployed groups are, by various estimates, 5 to 15 kilometres from Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, Ukrainian defence lines there appear to be holding, and the scattered villages, together with natural obstacles such as rivers and hills, will only make it more difficult.

The Russian Ministry of Defence’s announcement of full control over Kostiantynivka (Konstantinovka), an important stronghold in the Donetsk oblast that has seen fierce fighting for more than ten months, has been contested by Ukraine. The same appears to be true for some other locations, which, despite Russian advances and Ukrainian counterattacks, remain largely in a grey zone that neither side has managed to bring under firm control.


The nature of warfare has also changed dramatically. Various types of drones dominate the so-called ‘kill zones’, making massive assaults not viable, and most forward movement is now carried out by small tactical groups. Even when such units succeed in advancing and planting their flag, the effect is not always lasting—they are quickly targeted with drones and forced to retreat.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has upped the cost of war for the Kremlin with spectacular strikes deep into Russian territory on refineries, warehouses, and military infrastructure. Russia has responded in kind. If anything, this tit-for-tat escalation is only blurring the lines between civilian and military targets.

This is not entirely new in the current conflict, as many major industrial sites, particularly military production facilities and dual-use infrastructure, have already been targeted. Russia had long been the more active party, owing to its capability to strike Ukrainian regions far from the frontline. This situation is now shifting.
An Economy Under Strain

In late June 2026, Kyiv launched a 40-day operation aimed at “pressuring Russia to end its war.” First, Ukraine has acquired mid-range strike drones, which have enabled it to hit supply chains into Crimea, effectively isolating the peninsula and exacerbating the food and energy situation there.

Second, Ukraine has made progress in developing drones capable of striking facilities deep inside Russian territory, as well as establishing stable satellite navigation access. This is evident in sustained attacks on energy infrastructure, particularly oil refineries. The longest-range strike of this campaign hit a refinery in the city of Omsk, almost 2,500 kilometres from the Russia-Ukraine border. Kyiv has also launched a series of attacks on warehouses belonging to Russia’s largest online retailers across several Russian regions and has disrupted the passage of oil tankers, grain-carrying bulk carriers and container ships travelling to and from Black Sea ports. This has impacted Russia’s exports of crude oil and grain, compelling it to rearrange supply chains.


The results of Kyiv’s operation have been mixed. It has definitely posed serious challenges to Russia’s wartime economy: sustained strikes on refineries have triggered a fuel crisis across the country, with refining capacity falling and Moscow being forced to import petrol and diesel from abroad. The growing number of drone strikes, and their ability to reach distant regions, have brought the war home to many ordinary Russians, with recent surveys showing that anxiety levels have risen markedly compared to earlier years of the conflict.

However, the 40-day operation has done little to change the situation on the ground. It has done economic damage to Russia but has not shaken Moscow’s resolve to end the war on its own terms. It has also provoked Russia into intensifying attacks on Ukrainian logistics.

In recent weeks, for instance, Russia has stepped up strikes against Ukrainian ports, grain terminals on the Black Sea and commercial vessels heading to them—dealing a heavy blow to Ukrainian agricultural exports, one of the country’s few remaining sources of income. Russia has also destroyed nearly 250 petrol stations across various Ukrainian regions, particularly in the frontline-adjacent areas of the Kharkiv, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. Finally, capitalising on the Ukrainian shortage of interceptors for Patriot air defence systems, Russian forces have escalated strikes on the greater Kyiv area, home to many military and industrial facilities.

If the current trend of escalation continues without new agreements, Russia and Ukraine may be facing a brutal winter, in which economic strain inevitably spills over into a humanitarian crisis.

A Possible Endgame

Although the outlook for peace remains bleak, with previous attempts to craft a peace framework failing, the broader contours of how the war will end are discernible. For one, this will be a ceasefire along the line of contact rather than any land swaps presumably envisaged by the US-Russia discussions in Anchorage last year. It is a different matter that Russia may gain more territory by the time an agreement is signed. Second, Ukraine will likely become one of the most militarised countries in Europe, closely tied to Western security arrangements, albeit without formal NATO membership.

Despite neither side achieving its objectives, both could claim a form of victory: Kyiv for preserving its sovereignty, independence, and potential to further integrate into the European space; Moscow for creating a buffer zone on its borders and preventing Western military deployment on Ukrainian soil. The latter, however, would hinge on security guarantees offered to Ukraine, likely to be a point of hard negotiation.

Beyond Ukraine, Russia and European nations will also need to coordinate a new framework for coexistence—one that cools mutual hostility and brings more pragmatism to the relationship. Without a solid agreement on the future of European security architecture—itself likely to be the subject of protracted negotiations that may ultimately fail—the relationship will remain fraught with the risk of a new conflict flaring up.


Additional factors that will keep any peace deal fragile include domestic developments in both Ukraine and Russia, two countries that will suffer a post-war hangover. The loss of territory will bedevil Ukraine’s domestic politics for years to come, fuelling a sense of revanchism among constituencies pushing to regain lost lands. An economically weakened Russia, having expended vast resources in the war, would also seek clear mutual guarantees or deterrence mechanisms from the West. Beyond long-term economic issues, the country is likely to face deep social challenges in reintegrating all the demobilised soldiers back into society—something the Soviet Union grappled with in the late 1980s following the war in Afghanistan. Additionally, the social contract—a relatively high standard of living in exchange for reduced political freedoms—will come under further pressure in post-war Russia.

Although the Russia-Ukraine war is at an obvious deadlock, the conditions for the endgame have not yet ripened. For the diplomatic path to prevail, both sides must come to feel that continuing the war—wasting lives and economic and military resources—serves no strategic or political purpose. Kyiv and Moscow clearly are not there yet: both still hope to turn the tide of war in their favour.

Whether this ‘escalate to de-escalate’ approach can force a peaceful solution remains to be seen. One thing is clear: the Russia-Ukraine war will end in an armistice or a peace agreement rather than a total victory for either side.

About the authors:

Nandan Unnikrishnan is a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.

Aleksei Zakharov is a Fellow, Russia & Eurasia, with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.

Source: This article was published at the Observer Research Foundation.


About Observer Research Foundation
ORF was established on 5 September 1990 as a private, not for profit, ’think tank’ to influence public policy formulation. The Foundation brought together, for the first time, leading Indian economists and policymakers to present An Agenda for Economic Reforms in India. The idea was to help develop a consensus in favour of economic reforms.
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Putin’s Monopoly On ‘Russianness’ Has Allowed Him To Continue To Wage War In Ukraine And Must Be Challenged – OpEd


Russia's President Vladimir Putin. Photo Credit: Kremlin.ru

August 30, 2026
By Paul Goble

Key Takeaways:

Denis Bilunov argues the West still treats “ethnic Russians” as one bloc, which lets Putin claim a monopoly on “Russianness” and justify the Ukraine war.

He says those labeled Russian are politically, culturally, and even linguistically diverse; breaking that monopoly would weaken the regime more than treating all Russian-speakers as Moscow’s constituency.

His prescription is a Western strategy of institutional recognition—separate flags, seats, and voices for multiple “Russias” abroad—modeled on earlier shifts that recognized union republics and then non-Russian regions inside the federation.

Ever more people around the world recognize that the Russian Federation includes a variety of non-Russian nations who make up an increasing share of that country’s population and aspire to greater autonomy and in some cases even independence from Moscow.

But they still treat those whom the Russian census counts as “ethnic Russians” as an undifferentiated whole and even accept the idea that even those who speak Russian should be included part of that community. That is no small thing, and Denis Bilunov argues that it has given the Kremlin the ability to continue its war in Ukraine (region.expert/monopoly/).

The former editor of Kasparov.ru who is now a graduate student at Prague’s Charles University says that the Kremlin leader’s “monopoly on ‘Russianness’” is so strong that many in both the Russian Federation and the West accept it as somehow natural and fail to recognize that those called Russians are extremely diverse culturally and politically.


As long as Putin can successfully make this claim, his regime will remain stable and he will be able to conduct aggressive wars as now in Ukraine. But, Bilunov says, “if this monopoly can be challenged convincingly enough, the regime will lose its stability, and the chances for real change for the better will emerge.”

To that end, the West must adopt “a proactive strategy” aimed at challenging Putin’s claims to have a monopoly on the representation of ‘Russianness,’” depriving him of the chance to claim to speak for all Russians and Russian speakers and supporting the diversity of people lumped together as ethnic Russians so that these can lead to “an organic process capable of garnering mass support.”

These must involve first of all the recognition of how diverse those labelled ethnic Russian by Moscow in fact not only politically but culturally and even linguistically as well are and then on “institutional recognition” by such means as allowing representatives of these multiple Russias to compete under their own flags or have their own places in activities of various kinds abroad.

That is going to be difficult given Moscow’s media campaign and the inertia of western thinking, but the fact that there has been so much change first in recognizing that the union republics of the USSR were different and now in acknowledging that the non-Russian republics within the Russian Federation gives hope that Bilunov’s call will gain support.

 

How Secretary Bessent Is Going Full-Hegseth Retard to No Avail

by David Stockman | Aug 20, 2026 | 

Six months after Trumpy & Bibi launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran on February 28th, the so-called kinetic campaign has settled into a costly stalemate, at best. And a de facto military defeat as a practical matter.

In fact, what began as another furious “shock and awe” military offensive designed to quickly and fatally degrade Iran’s nuclear program, missile forces, leadership, and regional power projection capability has instead produced:

• no regime change.
• no collapse of Iranian governance.
• the severe depletion of American high-end munitions.
• badly damaged US forward bases across the entire Persian Gulf (Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan)
• significant personnel casualties, including 18 dead and 400 injured US servicemen.
• Massive Federal budget costs now approaching $100 billion and rising rapidly.

Even more importantly, this misbegotten war has handed Tehran a durable pretext for restricting maritime traffic through and around its territorial waters and the Strait of Hormuz (SOH). That is, with virtually inexhaustible supplies of homemade missiles, drones and other tools of sabotage, Iran has been handed what amounts to a global economic Kill Switch.

Yes, Washington’s naval blockade can reduce Iranian oil exports to a trickle, as shown in the table below. But the inverse is also true. Iran’s residual capacity to inflict damage on ships transiting the SOH, in combination with the resulting soaring insurance premiums, has also reduced non-Iranian export shipments through the SOH to barely 25% of steady state pre-war levels:

Needless to say, the cumulative economic disruptions from this drastic supply restriction, as measured in sharply higher energy prices, deep inventory draw-downs and increasing global growth drag, is making the current military stalemate untenable – especially as the November mid-terms draw ever closer.

Accordingly, Trumpy has now pivoted to an all-out economic war. Over the weekend Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent bombastically promised measures of economic isolation “never seen” in history. He was referring to an enhanced version of his ballyhooed Operation Economic Fury that is to be paired with the ongoing naval blockade.

Yet this economic escalation is not even remotely likely to succeed on the timeline or at the cost Bessent & Co assume. That’s because Iran remains substantially self-sufficient in food and many essentials, retains residual oil revenues through black-market channels and pre-blockade floating cargoes, and can endure prolonged isolation far longer than the already-strained global refined-product markets – especially diesel and jet fuel – can tolerate continued severe supply curtailment.

The fact is, global petroleum markets are badly strained, notwithstanding the more modest indications from what appears to be the Washington manipulated crude oil futures markets. As it happened, global physical stocks of petroleum were unusually high at the onset of the war – especially in China – so the initial impact of the 75% average reduction in shipments thru the SOH has been a one-time draw-down of these plentiful stocks.

As shown in the chart below, total global stocks (including government controlled “strategic reserves”) stood at 8.3 billion barrels in the peak months before February 2026. That compared to an estimated “working level minimum” for the global petroleum supply system of about 6.8 billion barrels. Accordingly, 30% of the pre-war excess stocks have already been drawn down – a safety valve that has kept a lid on global prices.

Moreover, on the crucial matter of middle distillates – diesel and jet fuel – which drive the global transportation of goods and people, the draw-down has been even more severe. The prewar stock level of 7oo million barrels contained 25o million barrels above the working minimum (est. 450 million barrels). Already, however, 125 million barrels or 50% has been consumed.

Needless to say, as stocks get ever closer to working minimums, the likelihood of consumer and distributor hoarding action increases sharply, thereby setting the stage for a blow-off top in global prices.

Indeed, a blow-off top in middle distillates and even gasoline is likely to happen long before the mullahs and their IRCG warlords are forced to cry UNCLE!

As shown in the graph below, while Brent crude (blue line) is currently up +35% from its pre-war level, diesel prices (orange line) are up by +59% and jet fuel prices (green line) are higher by+68%. This large differential is due to the sharp curtailment of middle distillates from Persian Gulf refineries and the manner in which overall crude shortfalls have impacted refinery slates around the world.

The evidence that the end product markets are far tighter than implied by the crude oil marker prices is clear as a bell in the graph below. The diesel crack spread – the per barrel price of input crude versus output diesel fuel – is now at previously imagined highs. As opposed to a normal spread of $40 per barrel, the diesel crack spread now exceeds $100 per barrel – a thundering testimony to the scarcity of a product that literally drives the goods-based economy.

So just give our wanna be warrior at the Treasury Department a few more months of 75% closure of the SOH export routes – and potentially a Houthi-caused jam-up in the Red Sea – and he will likely send refined product prices soaring – including for heating fuel uses just as the northern hemisphere heating season approaches.

Accordingly, Secy Bessent’s blustering proclamation of a new phase of Operation Economic Fury mirrors the same clueless overconfidence that marked the kinetic phase under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. That is to say, an exaggerated belief in the coercive power of American policy instruments and an under-appreciation of adaptation, second-order effects, and the relative resilience of the Iranian target versus the fragility of the global system that must absorb the costs.

The result, of course, is a lopsided race between a blockaded Iranian economy and the diesel- and jet-fuel-dependent economic arteries of the United States and the world. And on current evidence, the global petroleum market is the side closer to buckling.

The Kinetic Failure of Operation Epic Fury

At this point it is well to recall how badly the military phase of Operation Epic Fury has failed. It opened with much fanfare and overweening confidence that the intensive airstrikes that killed senior Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, degraded air defenses, struck naval and missile infrastructure and damaged nuclear-related sites would deliver a knock-out blow.

Indeed, early DOD claims spoke of thousands of targets hit and rapid progress toward decisive outcomes. But by mid-2026 the picture is drastically different. Fragile ceasefires and the June 17 Memorandum of Understanding produced temporary pauses and limited re-openings of SOH. However, hostilities quickly resumed, the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports has continued, and Iranian missile and drone attacks on U.S. and regional bases have persisted.

What has emerged, therefore, is ab echo of the stalemated trench warfare of WWI: That is, a “no end, no peace” equilibrium in which neither side can compel the other’s full capitulation without unacceptable further costs.

U.S. human costs include roughly 18 service members killed and more than 400 wounded – most owing to Iranian strikes on US Gulf bases. Financial estimates from the Center for Strategic and International Studies place direct war costs at upwards of $40 billion by late June, with munitions the largest component at approximately $26 billion.

However, when you factor in current defense supplementals and broader accounting estimates, the totals push far higher. Base and infrastructure damage across some 20 facilities in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and elsewhere have run into the tens of billions, rendering certain sites nearly uninhabitable and forcing personnel dispersal. Aircraft losses – dozens of platforms including Reapers, fighters, tankers and helicopters – add further hundreds of millions to billions.

Most constraining of all, however, is the munitions drawdown. Reliable reporting indicates Washington has expended virtually all of its global stockpiles of ATACMS and Precision Strike Missiles, roughly half of its Tomahawks, approximately 65 percent of Patriots, and upwards of 70% of THAAD interceptors. Replenishment will require years even under accelerated production.

At the same time, Iran’s residual capabilities remain significant. The nuclear program was heavily damaged but not eliminated; highly enriched uranium stocks and reconstitution potential persist. Missile and drone inventories were reduced but not exhausted, allowing continued strikes. And its deeply protected underground manufacturing sites continue to produce more missiles and drones.

Most importantly, the regime survived leadership losses and continues to function effectively owing to the highly decentralized governance structure put in place before the war but in anticipation of exactly the kind of strikes that the DOD carried out,

Critically, and as indicated above, the US/Israel initiated conflict gave Iran political cover to restrict or close traffic through the Strait of Hormuz – normally carrying roughly one-fifth of global oil and significant LNG – while the reciprocal U.S. blockade compounded the disruption, as quantified above.

In strategic terms the initiator of an offensive war that settles into attritional stalemate after six months without achieving its principal political or military objectives has failed. Epic Fury imposed real pain on Iran but at a steep cost and with residual Iranian agency that prevent any claim of victory.

Iran’s Resilience Under Blockade

The assumption underlying Bessent’s forthcoming Economic Fury measures is that tighter economic isolation, layered on the naval blockade, will rapidly compel Iranian concessions. But that assumption collides with Iran’s long-demonstrated structural resilience. Decades of prior sanctions and isolation forced Tehran to prioritize self-sufficiency and embrace an autrakic modelfor its domestic economy.

Domestic production covers approximately 85 percent of food needs; agriculture has continued to expand output in poultry, eggs, meat, greenhouse crops and wheat deliveries even amid drought and war. Northern ports and land borders with neighbors have facilitated continued imports of remaining essentials, while diversified trade routes and crisis-management mechanisms have prevented acute shortages of the sort that would force immediate political collapse. Iranian officials report that strategic food reserves have not drawn down during the conflict to date.

To be sure, the Iranian economy is under severe stress: year-on-year inflation has exceeded 70-80 percent, food inflation is higher still – even as the rial’s FX rate has collapsed and GDP is projected to contract several percentage points in 2026.

But these stresses are not the same as imminent buckling. Self-evidently, oil revenue has been sharply reduced by the blockade. Yet residual channels persist. Substantial volumes of Iranian oil left the Gulf before the tightest enforcement and remain in floating storage or on the blue water. Estimates of pre-blockade offshore stocks ran into the tens of millions of barrels, providing a multi-month revenue cushion as cargoes reach buyers (primarily China) and payments clear.

Shadow-fleet operations, ship-to-ship transfers off Malaysia and elsewhere, and temporary windows during the June-July MoU period allowed additional exports measured in tens of millions of barrels. Limited overland or alternative routing, while far smaller than seaborne volumes, further softens the oil revenue cut-back Black-market sales continue to generate hard currency even at steep discounts.

Iran is not immune to pressure, of course. Industrial damage, lost export revenue, hyperinflation and job losses are real. Input-output analyses suggest structural exposure in the range of 10-15 percent of output and value added from the combined kinetic and blockade shocks. But an economy that has practiced survival under sanctions for years, that feeds itself largely from domestic production, and that retains residual oil monetization can absorb months and months of further isolation.

The time horizon required for the blockade and new secondary measures to produce decisive political change is measured in multiple quarters or longer, not weeks.

The Global Stock Drawdown and the Tightness of Diesel and Jet Fuel

While Iran endures, the global stock buffers that absorbed the initial Hormuz shock have been largely exhausted, as we demonstrated above. Before February 28th commercial and strategic petroleum inventories sat well above recent historical ranges in many regions. China’s commercial and strategic holdings were estimated at well over one billion barrels after years of opportunistic filling.

IEA members also held emergency strategic stocks sufficient for coordinated release. After the conflict began, the market absorbed the largest supply disruption in modern oil-market history – at peaks more than 12–14 million barrels per day of affected Middle East flows – through a combination of demand destruction, alternative routing via pipelines, U.S. and other non-Gulf supply growth, the largest-ever IEA emergency stock release (400 million barrels), and aggressive inventory draws.

Despite all those mitigating factors, observable global crude inventories nonetheless fell at record rates in the March–May period. China reduced seaborne imports dramatically (by several million barrels per day at points) while drawing selectively on commercial stocks. So by mid-2026 China’s draws had totaled tens of millions of barrels even while total holdings remained large.

As shown above, U.S. and OECD commercial stocks also declined sharply. And now, after the coordinated IEA release of strategic reserves, the US SPR is down to 305 million barrels – the lowest level since 1983!

That’s especially salient because it was your editor who back then pushed Washington policy into the subsequent huge build-up shown in the graph below – to a peak of 720 million barrels around 2010. This build-up was based on the proposition that the SPR constituted a more efficient and sensible alternative to a high cost policy of domestic petroleum autarky that had been embraced by both parties during the 1970s.

In effect, therefore, the Donald’s pointless war on Iran has caused the remainder of 40 years of investment in efficient petroleum security to be liquidated in a matter of months – on top of the large 2021-2024 liquidation under Sleepy Joe Biden in behalf of his own re-election considerations prior to July 2024.

As also indicated above, the stock levels for refined products, especially middle distillates, have tightened even more severely. Pre-war Middle East exports supplied meaningful shares of seaborne diesel and roughly 20 percent of seaborne jet fuel. Their disruption, combined with reduced Chinese product exports and later Russian refining constraints, produced acute imbalances.

Jet-fuel prices in major hubs roughly doubled in the March-May window relative to early-2026 levels; crack spreads widened dramatically. Diesel prices rose sharply as well, at times overtaking jet fuel prices in European markets amid competing demand for scarce barrels.

Accordingly, excess inventories of both products have experienced the aforementioned 50% draw-downs already, and in some regions diesel stocks have approached multi-decade lows. By August 2026 the IEA was revising global demand and supply forecasts downward again, noting that previously available inventory buffers were rapidly depleting and that the continued Hormuz constraints were sharply curtailing product availability.

In short, the pre-February global petroleum stock cushion is largely gone. What remains is a far thinner global inventory position, elevated and volatile refined-product prices, and heightened sensitivity to any further interruption. Diesel powers freight, agriculture, construction and industry; jet fuel underpins aviation and military logistics. Both, obviously, are the lifelines of modern economies.

Further sustained restriction of Middle East product and crude flows, or renewed Iranian attacks on non-Iranian tankers attempting to exit the strait, would press these already fragile markets even harder precisely when buffers are lowest.

Again, it needs be recalled that the interaction of global stocks and market prices is not linear: When draw-downs reach critical thresholds relative to working minimums the distributor and end user demands for precautionary stocks can rise abruptly and dramatically. That, in turn, precipitously drains apparent above ground stock levels, sending prices in prompt and spot markets soaring skyward.

So if Secy Bessent thinks he has another six months of minimal flows through the SOH like that since February 28th, he surely has another think coming.

The Race and Bessent’s Overconfidence

The strategic picture is therefore a race. Iran’s blockaded economy can draw on self-sufficiency, residual oil monetization, and experience with isolation. The global economy – and the United States within it – must operate with sharply depleted commercial and strategic stocks, tight diesel and jet-fuel balances, and the constant risk that Iran will resume or intensify strikes on even the minimal levels of petroleum tanker traffic seeking to leave the Gulf.

Bessent’s forthcoming “never seen” measures and the continued naval blockade are presented as the financial equivalent of kinetic pressure—tools capable of bringing Iran to its knees before the global system feels unbearable strain. That framing, however, replicates the same analytical error that marked Epic Fury: to wit, an exaggerated estimate of American coercive leverage and an under-estimate of the target’s adaptive capacity and of collateral damage to the initiator’s own interests.

Iran’s oil trade has already migrated heavily to China and the shadow fleet; secondary sanctions on facilitators will raise costs and friction but will not instantaneously eliminate Iran’s oil revenue or force political surrender.

To the contrary, what Trumpy and Bessent are fixing to launch is an all-out Washington war on global commerce. American and third-country firms in shipping, insurance, brokerage and trade finance will absorb compliance burdens and lost business. That is to say, American business is being heavily taxed by Operation Economic Fury, and without representation or Congressional authorization to boot.

In any event, crude oil and product prices will remain elevated or spike further, feeding inflation and growth headwinds precisely when domestic political calendars are sensitive.

History offers little support for the belief that additional layers of isolation will succeed where decades of prior sanctions and six months of military pressure have not. The more probable outcome is prolonged mutual attrition in which the global diesel and jet-fuel markets, already operating with minimal buffers, reach critical stress before Iran’s domestic survival economy does.

In that contest the United States and its partners have more to lose from systemic disruption than a regime long practiced in enduring isolation has to lose from further hardship.

Epic Fury demonstrated the limits of kinetic force against a resilient adversary in a complex theater. Now, Secy Bessent’s unhinged Operation Economic Fury, launched from a position of depleted inventories and over-stretched munitions, risks demonstrating the same limits with higher systemic stakes.

The prospective announcement of “unprecedented measures” later this week will not alter the underlying arithmetic: Time favors the side that can live longer with less, and on present evidence that side is not the one whose refined-product lifelines are already stretched to the breaking point.

David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He’s the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back, and the recently released Great Money Bubble: Protect Yourself From The Coming Inflation Storm. He also is founder of David Stockman’s Contra Corner and David Stockman’s Bubble Finance Trader.

A Brief History of How Countries Sleepwalk Into War

John P. Ruehl

 August 3, 2026

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

A nominal ceasefire reached in April 2026 has done little to halt the escalation in the Persian Gulf. After Iran’s “attempted surprise attack” against US forces on July 28, the US retaliated by launching a “heavy wave” of airstrikes on July 30, according to NPR, targeting Iran’s “military command centers and missile facilities,” and intensifying the fighting in the Middle East.

Since the war began in February, Iran has suffered extensive destruction to military and civilian infrastructure, resulting in thousands of casualties. Washington’s Gulf allies and Israel have likewise faced sustained pressure from Iranian attacks. Yet, despite nearly $40 billion in US spending on the war with Iran and damage to American military assets in the region, the conflict has not sparked widespread public debate among its citizens.

Protected by two vast oceans and overwhelming military power, the US has long been able to separate everyday life from the consequences of war and shield policymakers from public scrutiny. The casualties in the current conflict remain relatively low, with the latest Iranian strike bringing the official number of US deaths to 18. Life at home has continued largely uninterrupted, with the US even cohosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup during the conflict.

But the war has already outlasted initial expectations. US President Donald Trump had earlier stated that the Iran war would last four to five weeks, according to Al Jazeera, and the American strikes would lead to the collapse of the Iranian government. The July 26 expansion of Houthi attacks on shipping and infrastructure around the Red Sea has, however, further complicated the war as it is unclear what they aim to achieve.

America’s detachment from the war marks a departure from its early history, when conflicts were felt more directly and romanticized through glory and duty. The Civil War shattered those beliefs by exposing Americans to the realities of industrial warfare, while Europe’s descent into World War I revealed how easily countries could underestimate the costs of conflict while overestimating their ability to adapt to them. Those lessons are worth revisiting as the modern US approach to conflict continues to evolve.

The End of Glorious War

The last time war fundamentally transformed everyday life in the US was arguably during the Civil War. Before that, conflict was still imagined through the lens of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and the frontier wars. Armed clashes were subjects of songs, novels, paintings, and patriotic myths, which portrayed them as decisive battles won through heroic charges, often accompanied by the fanfare of flags and drums.

As sectional tensions intensified in the lead-up to the Civil War, many Southern figures confidently insisted the commercial-minded North would never risk a costly conflict. In his infamous “Cotton is King” speech from 1858, South Carolina Senator James Henry Hammond declared, “No power on earth dares to make war upon” the South’s lucrative cotton economy.

Even if war came, political leaders assured it would be swift and with minimal loss of life. Judge Samuel F. Rice boasted, “we can whip the Yankees with popguns,” while South Carolina Senator James Chesnut Jr. claimed he would“drink all the blood shed” over secession. The first Confederate Secretary of War, Leroy Pope Walker, similarly told a crowd in April 1861, at the start of the war, that any blood spilled as a result of secession “could be wiped up with a handkerchief,” predicting that “before the first of May the flag of the Southern Confederacy will wave from the dome of the old Capitol in Washington,” according to Reason magazine.

Mark Twain would later blame the novels of Sir Walter Scott in particular for fostering romantic notions of chivalry among Southern elites and the idea that war would be noble and victorious.

Northern leaders were generally more restrained but no less susceptible to overconfidence. The New York Tribune stated, “Forward to Richmond!… the place must be held by the National Army!” Historian David B. Blight argues that “Lincoln, under the pressure of public opinion,” pushed General Irvin McDowell to advance before his army was ready in the hope of delivering a knockout blow that would end the rebellion.

The First Battle of Bull Run in 1861 became the defining symbol of the North’s misplaced optimism. Politicians, journalists, and curious civilians—some arriving with picnic baskets—gathered to watch what they believed would be the war’s decisive battle. Instead, they fled alongside retreating Union troops as Confederate forces prevailed, and the illusion of a short war vanished.

What followed was one of the earliest industrial wars in history. Railways moved large armies, factories produced weapons on an unprecedented scale, and entire regional economies were reorganized for the war. Much of the South was devastated as the North countered, while the North also experienced localized destruction. Around 750,000 Americans died in the war, which amounts to roughly half of all US war deaths in the nation’s history. Far from the romantic image of combat imagined in 1861, two-thirds of those who died in the war succumbed to disease.

The war preserved the Union and ended slavery, one of the most consequential achievements in American history, but it bore little resemblance to the swift and bloodless campaign envisioned before it started. Lincoln’s assassination also derailed hopes for a smoother Reconstruction and led to the political and racial divisions continuing for generations. The conflict demonstrated that even conflicts fought for essential causes rarely unfold as predictably as their supporters expect, producing lasting trauma and resentment alongside historic victories.

The Road to World War I

The Civil War left Americans wary of entering another conflict on the same scale, even as the country became an assertive world power. As Europe drifted toward World War I in 1914, Washington initially watched from afar, observing a continent that had avoided a great power conflict for decades, and seemed to have convinced itself that a new war would be short and even desirable.

European military leaders believed they could secure victory before calamity set in. German army officers Wilhelm von Blume and General von Liebert assured that the war would be quick, while German emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II reportedly told troops in August 1914 that “You will be home before the leaves fall from the trees” in autumn.

Some other political leaders were less optimistic, like Britain’s former Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, who feared a continental war would be disastrous, but conceded to the idea that such a conflict was inevitable. Historian William Mulligan argues that “political elites understood that war would bring in its wake revolution, chaos, and impoverishment,” but “lacked the emotional frameworks to grasp the scale of destruction.”

In The State, published posthumously in 1919, Randolph Bourne argued that democratic societies cultivated a “democratic desire for war,” encouraging citizens to identify the interests of the state with those of the nation. French writers Henri Massis and Alfred de Tarde, under the pseudonym Agathon, described how younger French citizens, with no experience of war, embraced militarism and patriotism with striking enthusiasm.

As mobilization began, crowds packed railway stations across Europe to cheer departing soldiers. Schoolboys lied about their ages to enlist, with many believing they’d be “home by Christmas,” and feared missing the adventure if they stayed behind. Nationalists and revolutionaries alike welcomed the war as a creative force capable of remaking society. Enthusiasm was strongest in major cities, but rural populations were more apprehensive, accepting mobilization as inevitable and a duty instead of a celebration.

Within months, the optimism of the prewar period had given way to the carnage of trench warfare. Millions were killed or wounded as the conflict settled into a brutal stalemate.

By the time the US entered the war in 1917, Europe had exhausted itself through attrition, revolution, and economic collapse. Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare, including the sinking of the Lusitania, along with the Zimmerman Telegram proposing a German alliance with Mexico, helped push Washington toward intervention. Then-US President Woodrow Wilson was encouraged by leading figures, including Major General Leonard Wood, Secretary of State Robert Lansing, as well as former President Teddy Roosevelt, and influential business interests like J.P. Morgan, to join the war.

But unlike in Europe in 1914, Wilson understood the US public still needed convincing. Soon after declaring war on Germany in April 1917, his administration created the Committee on Public Information, mobilizing tens of thousands of volunteers to deliver patriotic speeches in cinemas, churches, and other public gatherings. Newspapers, advertisements, films, and pamphlets, meanwhile, portrayed intervention as both the quickest path to ending the war and a moral crusade to make the world “safe for democracy.”

When the war ended in 1918, America’s late entry limited the loss of lives to 116,000 soldiers, ensuring that the homeland escaped the devastation that engulfed Europe. Yet many Americans emerged questioning the nation’s involvement, helping propel Warren G. Harding’s isolationist campaign to the presidency in 1920. Even so, the war permanently expanded Washington’s role in European affairs and established the promotion of democracy as a recurring justification for military intervention for the 20th century.

The Long Retreat from Mass War

The US again entered World War II after years of fighting by combatants from other countries in Europe. It suffered far fewer casualties and destruction, and emerged as the world’s dominant military power. Afterward, the US assumed responsibility for containing Soviet influence, framing military intervention as the defense of democracy. But US wars in Korea, and especially Vietnam, demonstrated that prolonged conflicts with tens of thousands of US casualties were becoming politically unsustainable.

From the 1980s onward, the US increasingly engaged in a lighter war model. Brief interventions in Grenada and Panama, followed by the Gulf War and Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, demonstrated that overwhelming technological superiority could deliver victory with limited American losses.

Even though the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq temporarily revived large-scale expeditionary warfare in the 2000s, historian Andrew J. Bacevich argued that Americans had grown accustomed to near-permanent military engagement because its costs were borne by a relatively small volunteer force rather than society as a whole. Without conscription, rationing, or heavy casualties, wars could expand with little effect on daily life beyond the headlines.

The prolonged insurgencies and failed nation-building efforts of the 2000s occupations soon pushed Washington back toward a lighter model, seen in Libya in 2011. Built around airpower, special forces, private contractors, and local partners, the immediate American costs were limited, even if the wider consequences—state collapse, refugee flows, and regional instability—were more severe for others.

The ongoing war in Iran represents the latest test of that approach. The promises of spreading democracy and the patriotic enthusiasm that accompanied previous interventions have all but disappeared. In its place is a general apathy, with most Americans opposed to the Iran conflict without feeling or even seeing it directly. The potential consequences, however, remain significant: what if Iran accelerates its pursuit of nuclear weapons, the Strait of Hormuz or the Red Sea face permanent disruption, resource prices surge, retaliation reaches the US homeland, or the conflict expands beyond the region significantly?

From the Civil War and World War I to the modern US invasion of Iraq and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, governments and societies have repeatedly underestimated how wars unfold. The current lack of public interest in the Iran conflict may seem like progress compared with the nationalist euphoria that accompanied earlier conflicts, but a society insulated from war is less likely to question why it is fought, how long it may last, and what success looks like. Distance from conflict can delay its costs, but the consequences of war can still reverberate long after the final shot has been fired.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications.