Wars and Rumors of War, 2026. Part 8. Donald Trump, China's (and Russia's) greatest ally edition.

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom

Matthew, Chapter 24.

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

July 26, 2026

China v. Taiwan

The Houthis hit oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia yesterday.

News reports hold that the administration has put on hold an escalation of the war due to a shortage of air defense munitions.  Savvy analysts, including yours truly, have been warning about that occurring for months, and not it's here.

So, in keeping with that, a prediction.

This is also likely a moment that Putin and Xi have been waiting for as well.  Our weapons stockpile has been built up over years, and now we've wasted it on a war fought for Israel and Trump's vanity.  Both Putin and Xi know that the next President, assuming at Trump 2028 coup to be unsuccessful, and assuming that we don't have another President before 2028, is much less likely to be a complete patsy and geopolitical dimwit.  

For Russia, that means Russia needs to fight on in hopes it can win before the next administration comes on.  For Xi, that means the time to invade Taiwan is. . . now.

July 29, 2026

Russo Ukrainian War

The U.S. Senate advanced Russian energy sanctions legislation Tuesday as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited the Capitol. The vote was seen as a tribute to the bill’s author, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, on the day of his funeral, which was widely attended by politicos. 

Trump fell asleep during it as J. D. Vance seemed oblivious to the dozing octogenarian and Bessent looked nervous about it, but then he always looks nervous.

July 31, 2026

Israeli Hamas War

The Bored of Peas has supposedly worked out a peace plan in Gaza.  Sober analysts a 4th Grade level have severe doubts about it.

August 1, 2026

Russo Ukrainian War

Now Trump is backtracking and saying the US won't license Patriot missile production to Ukraine.

August 2, 2026

Russo Ukrainian War

Ukraine has run out of ballistic missile interceptors.  This comes at the same time that the US supply is seriously depleted due to Donald Trump's illegal moronic war against Iran.

King Donny should free up what remains of the US supply and give them to Ukraine, and start emergency production for the US.  As for Iran, we can solve that problem simply by pulling out.  Better yet, pulling out, putting every senior commander who agreed to fight in a clearly illegal war on trial, and impeaching Donald Trump.

Crisis in Ceuta

Not a war but requiring Spanish military deployment, a mass flood of immigrants crashed into the Spanish North African city of Ceuta.

About 50,000 North African immigrants stormed the city, leading to dramatic news footage and MAGA "see, it could happen here" claims.  Missed in the story is that 48,000 of them returned to Morocco within 48 hours.

A bigger question may be why Spain retains a city that you would figure should be part of Morocco, but it does.

Italy defensively suspended the EU's border-free Schengen arrangements with Spain.

August 10, 2026

Israel v. Hamas.

Israel had rejected the "Board of Peace" peace plan, refusing to enter into a peace deal with Hamas until it is definitely disarmed.

Another blow to King Donny.

August 17, 2026

Russo Ukrainian War

Both sides exchanged heavy missile and drone attacks yesterday.  A NATO jet on patrol shot down a drone that had strayed into Romania.  

August 18, 2026

Russo Ukrainian War

Robert Shaheiev, 49, formerly of the Ukrainian Navy who defected to Russia early in the war died in an explosion in Sevastopol.

Whether he was targeted or not, Ukrainian operatives have proven effective at hunting down figures in the Russian military that they find particularly responsible for various matters.  Shaheiev defected with a submarine.

Korean War

Donald Trump has signaled that the US is going to scale back it's participation in joint exercises with the South Korean Army.

What's going on here is terribly unclear.  The US has maintained troops in the ROK since the 1945 and the threat of North Korean invasion is very real.  

I should note that this isn't entirely unprecedented.  Jimmy Carter actually campaigned on the idea in 1976 and tried to implement a phased withdrawal, which was abandoned over conservative and military objections.  Since the 1980s, military support of South Korea has been very strong.

Trumps move comes at a time when the US is losing an illegal war with Iran and is having to pull naval assets out of the Pacific.  It also comes at a point at which the longtime Red Chinese goal of forcibly reunited Taiwan with the mainland is at its highest point. Combined with that, Trump's administration is packed with National Conservatives who have a sort of Neo Nineteenth Century view of where the U.S.'s foreign policy should be focused.

Given that, Trump's decision could be the result of his listening to National Conservatives, or it could be because or logistical situation is much worse than admitted.

It could also be because South Korea refused to participate in the illegal war, like every other nation on earth did.  Trump has not taken that well.  Nobody seems to be pointing out that South Korea did participate in the Vietnam War, which Trump did not.  Trump himself, at any rate, referenced South Korea's lack of willingness to get into the losing war with Iran.

Because of Trump's other actions, however, there's widespread commentary about whether Trump is a Russian asset and this is influencing him on the world stage.  As radical as that sounds, there are reason to raise this question.  Certainly no other President has hurt US interest, and just the US in general, more than Trump, and he's a fanboy of Putin.

We've noted it elsewhere, but we've been worried about a Chinese strike on Taiwan in the near future.  The combination of the failed Iran War and Trump's other actions make that inevitable . The question is whether that will come this Fall, or next Spring.

Related threads:

King Donald's War, Part 10. "If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied." Donald Trump, the killer edition.

Last edition:

King Donald's War, Part 10. "If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied." Donald Trump, the killer edition.Labels: 119th Congress, 2020s, 2026, Death, Donald Trump, Houthi, Jordan, King Donald's War, Lies, Red Sea, Saudi Arabia, The roles of men and women, United States and Israel v. Iran, War Warnings, Women, You heard it here first

This is the Blueprint for an Invasion of South Korea

 

Monday, June 30, 1975. Changes in the Service.

Women could no longer be involuntarily discharged from the United States Armed Forces as a result of pregnancy, by orders of the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

30 June 1975: The last operational Douglas C-47 Skytrain transport in service with the United States Air Force, 43-49507, was retired and flown to the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

This Day In Aviation.

Last edition:

June 28, 1975. Death of Rod Serling.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Health, In Memoriam, Paratroopers, Personalities, Smoking, television, The written word, tobacco, World War Two

Easter Sunday, March 30, 1975.

It was Easter.

In 1975 I'm not sure if we would have gone to Mass the prior night, or on Easter Sunday itself.  Probably the prior night.  My father would have bought some Easter chocolates, but we wouldn't have done the Easter Egg thing.  One thing about being an only child is that you grow up quickly in a lot of ways.

Our small family would have had ham for dinner and probably potatoes au gratin, out of the box of course.

Thousands of Vietnamese Catholics were on the road, hoping to escape the advancing communists.

Da Nang was completely in the hands of the NVA.  The defeat there had become a rout, with only South Vietnamese Marines retaining discipline.

It was begging to dawn in the South Vietnamese government that the United States was not going to come to its aid, resulting in real anger in the South.  The withdrawal that had been going on had in mind something like the Pusan Perimeter operation in the Korean War in 1950, in which the United States reversed the course of the Korean War.  Geographically there were real similarities and the strategy made some sense, but only if the US was willing to reenter the war.

Last edition: 

Saturday, March 29, 1975. NVA takes Da Nang.

Labels: 1960s, 1965, 1970s, 1975, Army of the Republic of Vietnam, Campaign 275, Da Nang, North Vietnamese Army, United States Marine Corps, Vietnam War

M38 A1s, National Museum of Military Vehicles.

M38A1 with a recoilless rifle.

The first automobile I ever owned was a M38A1.

The prototype for the modern Jeep, basically, it entered civilian use as the CJ5, after entering military use in 1952.  Doubtless examples are still in use, and civilians varians are still produced by Roxor in India.

 Last edition:

M151 Jeeps. National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Labels: 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 4x4, Automobiles, Military, National Museum of Military Vehicles, Radio, Trucks, Wyoming (Dubois)

Friday. March 26, 1875. Violence in Texas.

Syngman Rhee or Lee Seungman (이승만) was born in Whanghai Province to Rhee Kyong-sun, a member of the aristocratic Yangban family.

Elected by the South Korean parliament in 1948, he'd assume dictatorial powers and govern the country until forced out of the country following student unrest in 1960.  He lived in Hawaii thereafter until his death in 1965.

In certain ways, Rhee symbolized a strategy that both Democratic and Republican administrations employed during the Cold War of supporting right wing autocrats in the belief that their countries would evolve into democracies.  In the case of South Korea, they were right.

Last edition:

Tuesday, March 23, 1875. The Marianas Trench discovered.

Labels: 1870s, 1875, Geology, Marianas, Marianas Trench, Pacific Ocean, Royal Navy, Science

M32 Tank Retriever, National Museum of Military Vehicles.

This is a M32 tank retriever, which is obviously based on the M4 Sherman chassis. These were used by the U.S. Army starting in World War Two, although a tank retriever based on the Lee/Grant chassis was also used.

These remained in use during the Korean War and into the 1960s when it was replaced by the M88.

Last edition:

M24 Chaffee, National Museum of Military Vehicles.Labels: 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, Armor, Army, Army of the Republic of Vietnam, Korean War, National Museum of Military Vehicles, Vietnam War, Weapons, World War Two, Wyoming (Dubois)

M24 Chaffee, National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Like the M26 Pershing, the M24 Chaffee shows the speed of armor evolution during World War Two.  A much more modern light tank than the M3, it remained in service until 1953 with the U.S. Army, and various other armies long after that.  The tank was heavily, if not terribly successfully, used by the ARVN during the Vietnam War.

M4 Sherman. National Museum of Military Vehicles.

 Last edition:

M577 and M113. National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Labels: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2020s, National Museum of Military Vehicles, Tracked vehicles, Wyoming (Dubois)

M47 Tank. National Museum of Military Vehicles.

The tank in the photograph above is a M47 "Patton" tank, the successor to the M26 Pershing.  The tank had a limited production run, entering service in 1951 during the Korean War, and being declared a limited standard in 1955.  Production ceased in 1953, and the tank was deployed to Korea in small numbers for testing.

The tank was the third tank to be based on the M26, including the M26. The second was the M46 "Patton", which was an upgraded M26 which was used during the Korean War.

A M5 Stuart light tank is in the background.

Related threads:

The M26 and its children

Last edition:

Japanese Type 7 305mm gun, National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Labels: 1930s, 1940s, Artillery, Imperial Japanese Army, Japan, National Museum of Military Vehicles, World War Two, Wyoming (Dubois)

Korean War Display, National Museum of Military Vehicles

The Korean War has always had a special fascination for me, as my father was a Korean War veteran.

The T-34/85 is the tank we normally think of when we think of the T-34.  One of the greatest tanks of all time, it was the best tank of the Second World War.

Last edition:

World War Two Naval Warfare. National Museum of Military History

Labels: Imperial Japanese Navy, National Museum of Military Vehicles, U.S. Navy, World War Two, Wyoming (Dubois)

Today In Wyoming's History: Sidebar: Wyoming and the Korean War

Today In Wyoming's History: Sidebar: Wyoming and the Korean War:

Sidebar: Wyoming and the Korean War

The Korean War is something that most Wyomingites don't particularly associate with our state, but the war did have a noticeable impact on the state, and Korea has been in the news a lot recently, so now might be a good time to take a look at it.

 Official painting of the Wyoming Army National Guard depicting Wyoming's 300th AFA in action.

Part of the reason that we don't think much of the Korean War and Wyoming, is that we don't think much about the Korean War at all.  The Korean War is one of several wars that have been tagged "forgotten wars" and, in the case of Korea, it's really true.  Perhaps that was inevitable, coming between World War Two and the Vietnam War, as it did.

Wyoming's role in the Korean War is tied closely to the the decline in the Army's conventional war fighting abilities that followed World War Two.  The largest war ever fought, World War Two was the largest conventional conflict of all time but it ended with the use of two nuclear weapons.  Given that, the immediate assumption by the American military was that the age of conventional warfare had ended and that any future war, of any kind, would be a nuclear war.  The Army was allowed to atrophy as a result.  Between 1945, when World War Two ended, and 1950, when the Korean War started, the Army's training in conventional warfare dramatically declined.

An end to conventional warfare turned out to be a massively erroneous assumption, and the place we learned that was in Korea.

That the US would fight a war in Korea was something that, moreover, seemed an impossibility in 1945, when events took us there for the first time in the 20th Century.  The US had actually fought in Korea once before, but in the 19th Century, oddly enough, when the Marine Corps landed briefly in Korean in an obscure punitive expedition.  It was World War Two, however that brought the US back onto the Korean Peninsula, but only due to the end of the war.

Korea itself had been a Japanese possession since 1910, when the Japanese simply made a fact out of what had been the case following the Russo Japanese War.  Korea had been more or less independent prior to that, but heavily influenced by its much more powerful neighbors.  The Russo Japanese War effectively ended Korean independence in favor of the Japanese.  The Japanese dominance was not a happy thing for the Koreans.  Korea remained a Japanese possession up until after World War Two, when it was jointly occupied by the United States and the Soviet Union, splitting the country in half.  The US had no intention to remain there but the original concept of uniting the country in a democratic process fell apart, and the Soviets and the US left with the country divided.  The US had weakly armed the South and failed to provide it with heavy weapons. The North, on the other hand, was heavily armed and trained by the Soviets, who left the North with the means, and likely the plan, on how to unite the peninsula by force.  In 1950, North Korea invaded the South with a well equipped and well trained Army.  They faced a poorly trained South Korean Army.

Soon after that they, quite frankly, faced a poorly trained American Army.  The US hadn't really given much thought to South Korea after leaving it, but the fall of China, followed by the Berlin Blockade, followed by shocking early revelations about Soviet espionage inside the US, followed by the development of the Soviet bomb, suddenly refocused attention on a country that now seemed to be a dagger aimed at Japan.  President Truman made the immediate decision to send the U.S. Army into South Korea to turn the North Koreans back.

That Army, however, wasn't the same Army the US had in 1945 after the defeat of Germany and Japan.  After VJ Day the U.S. had rapidly demobilized.  Moreover, convinced that all future wars would be nuclear in nature, the U.S. had let the Army deteriorate markedly.  It was poorly trained and not all that well equipped in some ways.

The intervention in South Korea required the call up of numerous Army National Guard units, and Wyoming's 300th Armored Field Artillery was one of them. Deployed in February 1951, the unit made up of young recruits from northern Wyoming and World War Two veterans proved to be a very effective one.  It achieved a fairly unique status in May 1951 at Soyang with the unit directly engaged advancing enemy infantry, a very rare event in modern combat and a risky one at any time.  The unit came out of the Korean War with Presidential and Congressional Unit Citations in honor of its fine performance in the war.  The individual Guardsmen of the 300th AFA largely came home after completing a combat tour, at a little over a year, but the called up unit remained in service throughout the war.  Other Wyoming Army National Guard units were also called up in this time, but only the 300th AFA was sent to the Korean War.

The Air National Guard's 187th Fighter Bomber Squadron from Wyoming was called up. The new Air Guard saw combat service for the first time in the Korean War.  Nine Wyoming F51 pilots were lost serving in the unit during the war.

Of course, many Wyomingites served in the war by volunteering for military service, or by being conscripted during the war.  Like earlier wars, Wyomingites volunteered in high numbers.

 

The M4 Sherman Tank. National Museum of Military Vehicles

The mass produced M4 was the most significant tank of the Western Allies during the Second World War.  It came, as these photos show, in a variety of models as it was improved over time.

 

Last edition:

First U.S. Armor Engagement of World War Two Display, National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Labels: 1940s, 1942, Armor, Army, Catholic, Christianity, Imperial Japanese Army, National Museum of Military Vehicles, Personalities, Philippines, Prisoners of War, religion, World War Two