We are facing Satan’s Victory
Paul Craig Roberts
As readers know, I am disappointed in US, European, British, Russian, and Iranian foreign policy analysts inside and outside of government, and most likely also the Chinese if I knew more about them. They dwell in false narratives that John Helmer terms “hopium.”
Opposed to the false narratives stand myself, John Helmer, and Gilbert Doctorow, three against many. I hesitate to speak for the three of us, but it comes down to this. The US is winning, because Putin has pissed away Washington’s belief in Russia’s deterrent capability by permitting a low level conflict to persist for 4.5 years, long enough for the world to conclude that Putin is not a meaningful combatant as his red lines have never been enforced. The Russian conflict with Ukraine, which could have been easily and quickly won had Putin been prepared, which he wasn’t, instead stupidly trusting the West in the Minsk Agreement, has expanded dramatically. The war front is no longer a Donbas village; it is deep inside the Russian territory. Oil production and refining have been disrupted. Shortages are appearing, and reportedly Russia is seeking to import diesel fuel and gasoline. Two formerly neutral European countries have joined NATO, and Latvia and Finland have abandoned their long-standing position and announced willingness to host US nuclear weapons in their countries on Russia’s borders. All the while Putin maintains his foreign policy of “trust in Trump.” There is no indication that the Russian leadership has any comprehension that Russia is in an existential war.
The same in Iran. The Iranian leadership has been manipulated into fighting a war not with its enemy–Israel–but with Israel’s proxy–Donald Trump. While Americans and Iranians pound each other in a game of tit-for-tat, Israel remains untouched. The longer Iran plays this mindless game, the more time the Israeli-Americans have to organize Iran’s defeat.
Russia and China do not comprehend that, although the war on Iran is, from Israel’s view, a war for Greater Israel–“from the Nile to Pakistan”–from Washington’s view Iran is merely a stepping stone for attacks on Russia and China.
Once Iran falls, Washington can feed jihadists into the Russian Federation, and Washington can cut off China from oil, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt did to Japan in the 1930s, thus allowing the US into a world war that permitted FDR to make Washington the supreme world power. China thinks mistakenly that the issue is Iran, but Iran is merely a stepping stone to bring conflict to China.
We must remember the American Zionist Neoconservatives’ doctrine of American hegemony as penned by US Undersecretary of State Paul Wolfowitz, which states that the principal goal of US foreign policy is to prevent the rise of any power that can serve as a constraint on American unilateralism. Neither the Zionist Neoconservatives nor any US president has renounced this hegemonic goal.
We can look at Trump’s support for Israel’s expansion in the Middle East as his payback to his Jewish supporters. But from the standpoint of the US Deep State or whatever you wish to call the powers that are independent of presidents and elections, Iran is merely a step toward the defeat of Russia and China and Washington’s hegemony over the world.
If I have in any way mistakenly associated Helmer and Doctorow with the explanation offered in this article, I apologize. I have no interest in quarreling with those capable of independent thought and willing to expose themselves, as I do, to the many arrows of disbelief.
What I see forming up is two massive wars from which there will be no winners.
Here is an AI presentation of Helmer’s view: https://johnhelmer.net/marshmallow-imperialism-john-mearsheimer-versus-john-helmer/
In his analytical discourse from June 2026, John Helmer presents a stark and “realist” assessment of the global geopolitical landscape, arguing that the United States and its NATO allies are engaged in a permanent war designed to weaken and destroy Russia and Iran. Helmer’s thesis centers on the idea that despite tactical shifts or changes in leadership, the underlying “capital and economic interest structures” of the West remain committed to an attritional strategy that treats diplomacy not as
The Ukraine Conflict: The “Firing Platform” and Deterrence Failure
A central pillar of Helmer’s analysis is the transformation of Ukraine into a “firing platform without people”. He argues that the rapid advancement of drone warfare has rendered traditional military objectives—specifically Russia’s goals of “demilitarization” and “denazification”—virtually impossible. Even as Russian forces move westward and gain control of regions like Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, they remain vulnerable to constant drone attacks on their rear and the Russian hinterland.
Helmer contends that Russian escalation has lost its deterrent capability. Because NATO is, in his view, “Nazified” and committed to a long-term conflict, Russian air strikes and deep-penetration attacks have failed to reduce the volume of drone production or precision targeting coming from the West. Furthermore, Helmer asserts that any Russian escalation against NATO territory, such as the limited nuclear strikes suggested by some hawks, would be counterproductive, as it would only serve to mobilize and consolidate Western military resources against Russia.
The Resilience of the US Empire in Europe
Contradicting popular narratives of American decline, Helmer argues that the US Empire is winning in Europe. Despite the loss of cheap Russian energy and the massive costs of militarization, the US has successfully coerced European states into “buying American” and following the “underlying US empire strategy of destroying Russia”. He notes that changes in European leadership—such as the replacement of Keir Starmer with Andrew Burnham in Great Britain—do not signal a policy shift, as these leaders remain equally committed to the permanent war against Russia and the support of Israel against Iran. For Helmer, the US is more powerful in Europe now than in recent memory, as European voter resistance has weakened and political leaders have been sidelined by Washington’s directives.
Domestic Fragility and Russia’s Internal Crisis
Helmer identifies a growing internal vulnerability within Russia that the West is actively exploiting. He points to a rise in “psychological insecurity” among the Russian population due to nightly drone attacks and disruptions to infrastructure. This is compounded by significant gasoline shortages and rationing in Western Russia, which affect everything from truck deliveries to harvests.
Crucially, Helmer links this instability to a breakdown in the social contract between President Putin and the Russian people. He argues that Putin’s refusal to challenge the high interest rate policies of Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina, combined with a perception that the government remains too tied to the Russian oligarchy, is eroding public confidence. With elections approaching in September 2026, Helmer suggests the Kremlin may face a “loss of confidence” that cannot be easily solved by military victories in Ukraine, potentially leading to desperate measures like vote rigging or postponing the elections altogether.
The Middle East: Partition and the Liquidation of Resistance
Turning to West Asia, Helmer views the negotiations between the US and Iran in Doha as a series of short-term accommodations rather than a path to a long-term settlement. He characterizes the US approach to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Iran as inherently deceptive, noting that figures like J.D. Vance and Donald Trump have already signaled their intent to violate the spirit of the agreement by refusing to release frozen Iranian assets.
Helmer sees a similar pattern in Lebanon, where he analyzes the MOU between Israel and Lebanon as a roadmap for the “liquidation of Hezbollah”. He describes the strategic situation as a “war of attrition” where the US has effectively partitioned the Strait of Hormuz into American and Iranian corridors, much like the earlier partitioning of Syria. In Helmer’s view, the US objective remains the destruction of any form of Arab or Iranian resistance to its [and Israel’s] regional hegemony. While Iran continues to negotiate from a position of relative military strength, it faces significant domestic pressures and a US administration that believes it is negotiating from a position of strength ahead of its own elections.
Conclusion
John Helmer’s analysis, and mine, and Doctorow’s paint a bleak picture of a global order defined by permanent attritional warfare that plays into US and Israeli hands. We question “delusional” optimism regarding a US defeat. Instead we see that the US Empire is effectively managing its alliances and utilizing technological proxies (like Ukraine’s German drones) to keep Russia off-balance. For Helmer, the primary challenge for Russia and Iran is not just surviving the Israeli-Western military onslaught, but addressing the internal economic and social contradictions that the US-led permanent war is designed to exacerbate. For example, in Russia the Central Bank Director refuses to lower interest rates until Putin acknowledges Russia as an American Protectorate. Thus, Putin’s ever-widening, never-ending war is the pro-American Russian central bank director’s excuse for closing down the Russian economy.
Here John Helmer explains Russian War Doctrine to Putin, who doesn’t want to hear it: https://johnhelmer.net/the-iran-warfighting-model-and-the-russian-options-the-red-flag-the-red-herring-options/
I do not speak for Helmer and Doctorow. What I see, and hopefully I am mistaken, is two major wars, both taxing the US, Russia, and China to the full extent. The war in the West will result from the West being assured by Putin’s pusillanimous response to threats that Putin will surrender Russia before he will fight. In the East the inability of the Muslim world to understand that America is merely the proxy enemy, the real one being Israel, will result in self-deception and defeat.
The unity of Washington and Israel over the world is Satan’s victory.