International
Is Russia at War With Ukraine, or With the West?
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German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock this week, on entering a “new era of nefariousness”:
I say clearly and across the Atlantic, what is right and what is wrong shall never be irrelevant to us. No one wants and no one needs peace more than the Ukrainians and Ukraine. The diplomatic efforts of the U.S. are of course important here. But such a peace must be just and lasting and not just a pause until the next attack… We will never accept a perpetrator-victim reversal. A perpetrator-victim reversal would be… the end of security for the vast majority of countries. And it would be fatal for the future of the United States.
Baerbock’s declaration that a “perpetrator-victim reversal” (a Täteropferumkehr, I’m reliably informed) would be “fatal” to the U.S. was historic. It was accompanied by a promise that “as transatlantacists,” Europeans must “stand up for our own interests, our own values, and our own security.” Although new leaders are ready to take the reins in Germany, she said, there can be no waiting for the transfer of power. Immediately, “Germany must take the lead at this historic milestone.”
A few years ago Baerbock pleaded for patience with a British conservative who demanded to know why Germany wasn’t providing Leopard tanks to Ukraine.
Now, with Donald Trump cutting off weapons deliveries and shutting down access to ATACMS missiles, Baerbock’s speech is an expression of more enthusiastic European support for continued fighting.
The war in Ukraine is often called a proxy conflict between Russia and the West or Russia and the U.S., but it increasingly looks more like a fight between Baerbock’s “transatlanticists” and those who believe in “spheres of influence.” In preparing Racket’s accompanying “Timeline: The War in Ukraine,” I found both sides articulated this idea repeatedly.
In January, 2017, as he was preparing to relinquish his seat to Mike Pence, Joe Biden alluded to the recent election of Donald Trump in a speech at Davos. Describing the “dangerous willingness to revert to political small-mindedness” of “popular movements on both the left and right,” Biden explained:
We hear these voices in the West—but the greatest threats on this front spring from the distinct illiberalism of external actors who equate their success with a fracturing of the liberal international order. We see this in Asia and the Middle East… But I will not mince words. This movement is principally led by Russia.
Biden even then lumped Trump and Putin together, as enemies of the “liberal international order.” Russian counterparts like Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, spoke of a “post-West world order” where diplomatic relations would be based on “sovereignty” and the “national interests of partners.” These are two fundamentally irreconcilable worldviews. Was conflict inevitable, or could peace have held if Russia didn’t strike in 2022?
There’s no question who invaded whom. Hostilities began in February, 2022 with an angry speech by Vladimir Putin and bombs that landed minutes later in Ukraine. Little discussion of the “why” of the war took place in the West, however.
Phrases like “unprovoked aggression” became almost mandatory in Western coverage. Politico interviewed a range of experts and concluded that what Putin wanted was “a revanchist imperialist remaking of the globe to take control of the entire former Soviet space.” This diagnosis of Putin’s invasion as part of a Hitlerian quest for Lebensraum and a broader return to national glory might have merit, but it was also conspicuously uncontested. A differing article by University of Chicago professor John Mearshimer declaring the crisis “the West’s fault” made him, as The New Statesman just put it, “the world’s most hated thinker.” Few went there after.
Russians and Ukrainians don’t have the typical profiles of ancient warring tribes. They have a deeply intertwined history, with citizens of both countries retaining many of the same customs, jokes, and home remedies, while living in the same crumbling Soviet buildings, with fondness for the same cabbage soup and moonshine. There are huge numbers of mixed/bilingual families and many famous cultural figures (including my hero Nikolai Gogol) are claimed by both countries. They’ve fought before, but what jumped out reviewing this “Timeline” is how much it seemed that these old Slavic neighbors mostly fall out now over attitudes toward the West.
It’s hard looking back not to be struck by the superior tone of bodies like the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), whose “reviews” of Ukrainian and Russian elections often read like zoological descriptions of inferior species. Same with a tsk-tsking report by a mission of visiting IMF economists in 2013, who were appalled by Ukrainian energy subsidies that were among of the few popular remnants of Soviet life.
These imperious Western assessments of childlike Slavs, and the panic and shame of some local officials before such foreign judgments, recall familiar satires in Russian literature (The Government Inspector comes to mind). Nationalists in both countries balked at this “advice,” and by the late nineties some came to the conclusion that the cost of cooperation with the West was greater than the benefit. These dynamics accelerated after the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Maidan events of 2013-2014, which Russians still see as a West-backed coup and the beginning of the current war. Russians will say “first blood” was drawn in military operations against Donbass protesters around the same time. Those in the West will point at the 2014 annexation of Crimea as the beginning of territorial war.
The idea of Germany “taking the lead” in a war to secure the primacy of “transatlanticists” worries me more than trying to pronounce Täteropferumkehr. However, whether or not you think Baerbock is right, and a peace deal now would be a worthless “pause,” depends a lot on how you read this history. What do you think, and why?
James Lyons-Weiler
What People, Universities, and Pharma Do Not Yet Understand About the Kennedy Regulatory Bar: It Signals the End of the Regulatory States of America.
Science must outlive the PR cycle.
Modernization, as used today by industry lobbyists and public health officials, often amounts to a euphemism for deregulation: fewer checks, less transparency, and faster product pipelines with fewer questions asked. In contrast, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s approach to public health modernization is actual modernization—where rigorous science, true accountability, and unwavering public safety form the non-negotiable baseline.
The Kennedy Regulatory Bar isn’t a buzzword, and it’s certainly not a rhetorical device. It’s an operating philosophy grounded in scientific integrity and public duty. For those who understand regulatory policy only as an obstacle to commercial throughput, the Kennedy Bar feels like a threat. But to those who understand what science is—a falsifiable, ethical, and reproducible method of discovering truth—it represents nothing less than the restoration of sanity.
Defining the Kennedy Regulatory Bar
Secretary Kennedy has made his expectations perfectly clear. In his own words:
“Journalists like yourself assume that vaccines are encountering the same kind of rigorous safety testing as other drugs, including multiyear double-blind placebo testing. But the fact is that vaccines don’t.”
— Interview, STAT News, Aug. 21, 2017
“By freeing [vaccine makers] from liability for negligence, the 1986 statute removed any incentive for these companies to make safe products. If we want safe and effective vaccines, we need to end the liability shield.”
— Press Statement in Support of HR 5816, Sept. 26, 2024
“Mr. Kennedy believes vaccination should be voluntary and based on informed consent. For consent to be truly informed, the underlying science must be unbiased and free from corporate influence.”
— Campaign FAQ – Vaccines, Kennedy24.com, Aug. 15, 2023
“My mission over the next 18 months… will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power.”
— Campaign Announcement Speech, Boston, Apr. 19, 2023
These principles, articulated repeatedly by Sec. Kennedy across media interviews, press events, and official communications, form the foundation of what we now call the Kennedy Bar.
The Kennedy Regulatory Bar: Five Core Standards
Rigorous Science: Long-term, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials are the gold standard and must not be circumvented. This is but one example. All of biomedical science should be upgraded to highest standards.
Restored Liability: No blanket immunity for manufacturers; liability is essential to safety. This flies in the face of concerted efforts by Pharma to expand liability exemptions (e.g., PREP Act).
Transparency: All trial data must be made publicly available in machine-readable form—no redactions, no gatekeeping. Collins failed to enforce this, and the failure was noted.
Independent Oversight: Regulatory decisions must be made by individuals and boards free of industry conflicts of interest. This includes, but is not limited to, vaccines, drugs, devices, and procedures.
Informed Consent: Patients must receive full, truthful information about benefits and risks—without coercion or censorship, and their rights to free, prior, informed consent are absolute.
These are not radical ideas. They are what science used to be before it was rebranded as a partner to commerce.
Why “Banning the mRNA Vaccines” Isn’t Necessary—If the Regulatory State Is Fixed
Some critics ask: Why not just ban mRNA vaccines outright?
The question misunderstands both the Kennedy Bar and Secretary Kennedy’s governing philosophy. Banning an entire class of biomedical products by executive fiat would mirror the very authoritarianism that corrupted the regulatory state in the first place. The goal is not to replace one top-down mandate with another—it is to restore bottom-up scientific validity, where products succeed or fail based on their actual merit, risk profile, and necessity.
Under the Kennedy Bar, no product—mRNA or otherwise—can bypass the full burden of proof:
- Did it go through long-term, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials?
- Were all adverse events transparently reported and analyzed?
- Was there independent oversight?
- Can the public access the raw data?
- Was informed consent meaningfully obtained?
If the answer is no—as it has been for many mRNA formulations—then the product simply fails to meet the regulatory standard. No ban is needed. Reality disqualifies it.
The Kennedy strategy is structural, not performative. It focuses on building a regulatory ecosystem that is incapable of licensing unsafe or ineffective products. This is a stronger safeguard than any prohibition. Rather than banning, Kennedy’s approach makes bad science impossible to pass off as medicine.
Once transparency is non-negotiable…
Once liability is restored…
Once regulatory capture is dismantled…
Then any product built on hype, shortcuts, or undisclosed risks—whether mRNA or otherwise—will collapse under the weight of real scrutiny.
That is not censorship. That is civilization defending itself by enforcing its own standards.
Integration Over Isolation
What sets Kennedy’s approach apart is not only the bar he sets for scientific integrity, but it is obvious this is how he is implementing it across government. As Secretary of Health and Human Services, he is already working to integrate the work of all HHS agencies—CDC, NIH, FDA, CMS, HRSA, and others—into a coherent, collaborative ecosystem. No longer will one hand of government ignore the consequences of the other.
Where prior administrations tolerated bureaucratic silos and jurisdictional loopholes, Kennedy insists that scientific rigor be institutionalized—not merely idealized. Under his leadership, agencies are being asked to communicate better, share safety signals earlier, co-design surveillance systems, and synchronize risk communication strategies.
This is not just about stopping regulatory failure. It’s about building functional synergy between the very institutions tasked with protecting public health.
The Academy’s Crisis of Conscience
Many universities have not yet recognized that the Kennedy Bar creates a mirror they cannot easily turn away from. For decades, medical schools and public health departments have received lavish funding from pharmaceutical companies and government agencies with revolving doors. This arrangement has subtly—sometimes overtly—coerced researchers to conform to sponsor expectations, burying negative results and rewarding compliance with publication and promotion.
Secretary Kennedy has quietly changed the rules of engagement. Prestige will no longer in the place of principles. A new standard is emerging, and it doesn’t care what editorial board endorsed your work—it asks what you measured, how long you observed it, and who paid you to interpret it.
I recently gave a speech “How to Speak MAHA” to a collection of research administrators at midwestern state Universities. They did not grasp the reality that those Universities who are cheerleading their researchers to submit more, not fewer, grant proposals in response to calls for proposals to transform medicine will be scheduled for prestige and more funding. Good actors will be rewarded. Those obsessed with their bottom lines will have to find funding elsewhere. Those publishing in sketchy journals against the recommendations of HHS might suffer a ding in their grant scores.
The message from this administration is simple, and our universities now face a choice: modernize into true scientific integrity, or double down on performative consensus. The Kennedy Bar forces the question: Is your institution educating scientists—or training enablers? No grant is worth the erosion of public trust. No journal impact factor outweighs the duty to truth. The age of science as branding is over. The age of science as science—open, accountable, and rigorous—has returned.
The Industry’s Real Dilemma
Pharma does not fear Kennedy because he’s against innovation. They fear him because he demands real innovation—scientific advancements that can survive public scrutiny, not just regulatory maneuvering.
For decades, the vaccine industry has relied on two tricks: (1) measuring success through surrogate endpoints like antibody titers rather than clinical outcomes, and (2) conducting studies in silos—never long enough, never with full data access, and almost never with independent safety boards. This system has produced a torrent of marginally tested products with maximum immunity from liability and minimal transparency.
Under the Kennedy Bar, the era of “emergency forever” is over. The industry must either meet real scientific thresholds or lose the public’s trust—entirely. This is not punishment. It’s evolution. It’s the grown-up phase of medicine. A moment of maturation for a sector that has long preferred speed over scrutiny, revenue over rigor.
And it comes with a choice: evolve or… be revealed.
Outflanking the “Modernization” Rhetoric
The PR pivot has already begun. Corporate spokespeople and foundation-backed academics are working overtime to redefine “modernization” as “streamlining,” “accelerating,” or “expanding access.” But these are euphemisms for lowering standards, usually without public debate.
Kennedy’s modernization is not deregulation. It is re-regulation—the restoration of the scientific method, the demand for data, and the end of special pleading. His is not a revolution in tone, but in epistemology. He is not rebranding trust—he is rebuilding it.
Science Must Outlive the PR Cycle
Regulatory systems that abandon the scientific method for public relations will inevitably collapse. The people know. They have lived the adverse events. They have watched silence fall where transparency was promised. They’ve seen academic journals censor, media outlets spin, and regulators hedge their language to protect careers rather than lives.
The Kennedy Bar is not a barricade—it is a foundation stone. It does not prevent innovation. It ensures that innovation is real.
So to the regulators: Your authority does not come from secrecy—it comes from public trust.
To the industry: Your survival depends on the integrity of your products, not the slickness of your press kits and forward-looking statements.
And to the universities: Your legacy will not be measured in grants received, but in truths defended.
Those who come up to the bar will see not only translational success, but will also transformational success.
And they will sleep better at night.
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Amidst rough seas, you need a steady sailor.
Not just what’s happening, but what’s coming next.
“I think we’re going to see things that we haven’t seen in our lifetime in the Middle East,” he said.
This could go one of two ways, neither is small.
Victor Davis Hanson isn’t known for hyperbole. So when he opens with a warning like this, people pay attention:
“We are at an historic time in the Middle East,” he said.
“Never in our lifetimes have we been closer to a complete revolutionary fervor that gives promise of normalcy for the Middle East. And never have we been in more danger of seeing the entire region blow up.”
The paradox is striking.
Peace may be closer than ever, but so is total collapse.
And at the center of it all is the unfolding conflict between Iran and Israel, which Hanson called “surreal.”
Reflecting on the rapid collapse of Iran’s regional dominance, Hanson admitted that even a few years ago, this moment would have been unthinkable.
“If we had this conversation five years ago,” he said, “and I said to you, the Iranian nation that is huge compared to Israel, ten times the population, the Iranian nation has lost all control of the Houthi terrorists, and they are themselves neutered…”
He pointed to a chain reaction across the region: Iran’s proxy forces in Gaza and the West Bank have been neutralized. Hezbollah, once a feared military force, is now dormant.
“They’re gone as a Hamas, as a fighting force. The formidable, the terrifying Hezbollah cadres, they’re inert.”
The chaos in Syria, once a stronghold of Iranian influence, now seems to be working against Tehran.
“There is no more Syria, the Assad dynasty, the pro-Iranian, the Syria. It’s in chaos. But whatever the chaos is, seems to be anti-Iranian.”
The collapse is strategic, not just symbolic. Hanson noted that the so-called “Shia crescent” connecting Tehran to the Mediterranean is no longer intact.
“Lebanon is free of Iranian influence. So is Syria. Gaza, a de facto, will be.”
Even Russia, once a key ally, is no longer a player in the region.
“It’s tied down in Ukraine,” he said.
“Iran itself, the formidable powerhouse of the Middle East that evoked terror all over, has no defenses.”
Over the course of just five days, Israel has launched a targeted military campaign to dismantle Iran’s strategic infrastructure.
According to Hanson, the damage has been sweeping.
“They have dismantled all of the Iranian missile defenses. They have dismantled the terrorist hierarchy. They have dismantled the people who are responsible for the nuclear program.”
And yet, there’s risk.
“The Iranians have sent over 400 ballistic missiles and drones into Israel,” he said, “and 90 percent are stop. But that 10 percent gets through.”
Which brings us to the turning point.
All of this only matters if it ends with Iran’s theocracy on the brink of collapse.
If it doesn’t, everything that’s been gained could be erased.
“All of this chaos and all of this war will be for not if Iran’s theocracy emerges intact from this war.”
Even more dangerous, he added, would be a scenario in which the country’s nuclear infrastructure survives or can be quickly rebuilt.
That possibility has triggered one of the most urgent strategic questions on the table: Can Israel finish the job?
Or will it need help from the United States to strike Iran’s deeply buried nuclear facilities?
This is where things get complicated.
Under the “America First” foreign policy doctrine, Trump has been clear: no more forever wars, no more ground troops in the Middle East.
But Hanson argued that Trump’s actions tell a deeper story.
“I’m not an isolationist, I’m a Jacksonian,” he said, echoing what Trump might say.
“You should have known that when I took out Soleimani… when I took out Baghdadi… when I took out the Wagner Group.”
The message? Trump doesn’t go looking for wars. But when deterrence is at stake, he’s not afraid to act decisively.
Still, Hanson posed a chilling question: what if the Iranian regime survives?
“If this war should end with the Iranian regime intact and the elements of its nuclear program recoverable,” he warned, “then in some ways it will be all for naught.”
Despite Iran’s military losses, its media destruction and its isolated position, surviving such a coordinated strike could give it something even more powerful than weapons: perceived invincibility.
“It will be more like, oh my gosh, Iran survived everything that Israel, and by association the United States, threw at it.”
“It’s indestructible.”
And that, Hanson suggested, would be the real danger.
Not just a return to the status quo, but a shift in perception that emboldens the regime and reshapes the balance of power across the region.
Now the question hanging over the entire conflict is this: does the world play it safe and allow remnants of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure to survive?
Or risk a final strike that could eliminate the threat for good, but possibly trigger even greater instability?
“Do you risk more danger by taking out and eliminating the nuclear threat for good,” Hanson asked, “and by association, you humiliate the theocracy to the point it can be overthrown?”
That’s the gamble.
He didn’t shy away from his own discomfort with war.
“I don’t like forever wars,” he added.
“I don’t like preemptive wars. I do not like the United States intervening anywhere in that godforsaken area. But if the war ends with the regime intact and a recoverable nuclear program, it won’t just be back to square one. It will be a disaster.”
That’s when he dropped a bombshell prediction of the future in the area after the dust settles in the desert.
Whether this ends in collapse or resurgence, Hanson believes the next phase of the war could reshape the entire region and the world’s understanding of power in the Middle East.
“So we’ll see what happens,” he said.
“And hold on, everybody. I think we’re going to see things that we haven’t seen in our lifetime in the Middle East. And it could turn out very bad.”
“But it could also turn out to be quite revolutionary and remake the map of the entire region.”
This story was made possible with the help of Overton —I couldn’t have done it without him.
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