Shown here are highlights; his site additionally includes maps and other pictures:
[I add my few comments to it between brackets.]
https://ghostarchive.org/archive/AQIqj
As the US pretends once again to try and “pursue peace” in its own proxy war on Russia – remember the various layers all of this takes place on – and look at the layers that actually matter and ask yourself what is taking place there regardless of what the US says superficially at Layer 1.
Examining the Layers of US Foreign Policy (from my latest video)
Layer 1: Propaganda – The US claims it “seeks peace” in Ukraine, pretending to be an impartial mediator when in reality it is America’s proxy war to begin with.
Layer 2: Operational Reality – As the US pretends to “seek peace,” US ISR and drone/communication technology is used by CIA-directed Ukrainian intelligence ops to strike at Russian energy exports to cripple Russia’s economy.
Layer 3: Corporate-Financier-Funded Policy Making – RAND Corporation back in 2019 called for a proxy war (not “peace”) with Russia using Ukraine and including among “economic measures” “hinder petroleum exports” and “reduce natural gas exports and hinder pipeline expansions,” which we now see taking place as operational reality.
What evidence, beyond “Layer1: Propaganda” exists to suggest the US actually wants “peace?”
Answer: NONE! [Though I agree with this, many other analysts, such as Alexander Mercouris, have taken Trump’s ‘negotiations’ with Putin seriously enough to devote extensive running commentaries upon, and analysis of, those ‘negotiations’, which I, like Berletic, have always believed to be, on Trump’s side, purely for show, never authentic, and that Trump is just as much of a neocon as were Bush, Obama, and Biden, which is the reason why Trump has filled both of his Presidential Administrations with neocons in almost all important Departments and functions — he, himself, is totally a neocon, basically just a sales-agent for U.S. armaments-producers. Putin knows that Trump is a fake. Maybe the reason why Putin plays along is to delay American action until Putin will launch the final stage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and get Ukraine’s surrender 100% on Putin’s terms. He would then not only have exhausted NATO but defeated it — finished it off peacefully. However, Trump seems to have developed a personal hostility toward Zelensky. If he has, then Putin could be secretly negotiating with Trump for him to accept a Russian victory if it can be blamed on America’s European ‘allies’. In any case, I believe that none of the public press about the Trump-Putin ‘negotiations’ should be taken seriously.]
See the whole video:
Dec. 28
Pro-Ukrainian Map Indicates Virtually ALL of Guliapole Under Russian Control
Pro-Ukrainian map still pretending Ukrainian forces hold Myrnograd near Pokrovsk admits Guliapole in Zaporozhzhia oblast has been nearly fully taken by Russian forces;
This comes as a general collapse in Ukraine’s fighting capacity rapidly accelerates, spurring a US-European “division of labor” under which the US is tasking Europe to fill in the gap left by dwindling Ukrainian capabilities;
Ideally the US would like to force a Minsk 3.0 freeze to buy time to rearm and reconstitute both Ukraine and Europe’s military capabilities including military industrial production – but feeding Europe into the proxy war next if Russia rejects a “ceasefire” appears to be the more likely eventuality
US Continues Pursuit of Greenland
This fits into the already expanding de facto blockade the US and its proxies are placing on Russian, Iranian, and increasingly Chinese maritime shipping – especially energy shipments – Greenland essentially closes Russia and China’s “Northern Sea Route” along the Arctic;
In the context of Washington’s ongoing “division of labor,” where Europe assumes a greater role in the US proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, including the possibility of Europe feeding itself into the proxy war after Ukrainian forces are fully depleted, the US would seek a large, permanent military presence in close proximity but outside the immediate theater of conflict (mainland Europe) – Greenland serves as one of several ideal locations where ISR assets can continue operating and supporting European forces in the same way the US currently supports Ukraine within mainland European territory;
The US is not withdrawing from its pursuit of global hegemony, it is radically accelerating it and is openly preparing to feed its largest and most useful proxies (the EU, Japan, South Korea, etc) into war with Russia and China to overextend, deplete, and distract both nations while the US buys time to gain ground in military-industrial capacity, and most important of all, the AI race;
US think tanks and senior US policymakers including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt believe that whoever wins the AI race (assumed to end in the 2040s) will irreversibly “reinvent” the entire world in whatever image they choose (for the US this will be permanent US primacy [meaning control over the entire world, virtually eliminating international law from the U.N., replacing that democratic international-laws based order, by the U.S. Government dictated and enforced “international-rules based order”]; for China and Russia, permanent multipolarism [but if that “multipolarism” is to be achieved without amending the U.S.’s Charter to replace the Truman-designed U.N. by transforming it into the U.N. that FDR had planned, then such a “multipolarity” would still be no better than the world-order that had produced both World Wars; so, it would fail to prevent a WW3; such a “multipolarity” is thus merely a popular bumper-sticker, with little real analysis behind it, no authentic solution at all, unless the U.N. is transformed from being Truman’s U.N., into being FDR’s U.N.] – everything the US is doing is meant to distract away from this race and delay its adversaries amid it.
[MAP is shown of “China’s Polar Silk Road”]
Another New War Launched by the “Peace President” – This Time, Oil-Rich Nigeria
US President Donald Trump brags about bombing yet another “coincidentally” oil-rich nation, Nigeria claiming to strike terrorists he claims are killing Christians (on Christmas, obviously for PR points, not strategic purpose).
This is after inviting Al Qaeda in Syria leader Al Jolani to the White House who has been slaughtering Syrian Christians, Druze, and Allawites since the US helped him take power under the Biden administration in late 2024.
The terrorists in Nigeria are the direct result of the US overthrow of Libya likewise using Al Qaeda terrorists both the Obama/Biden and now Trump administrations all support.
Since the average Trump supporter gets their news from Fox, Brietbart, or Newsmax, which has told them NONE of this, they are likely blissfully supporting all of these new wars despite many voting for Trump to end America’s decades-spanning global murder spree.
Full Questions/Answers with Sputnik Regarding “Trump Class” “Battleship…”
1 What is the behind Trump’s decision to launch a campaign for the renewal and improvement of the US fleet?
ANSWER: This decision to expand the US navy into a vast high-tech “golden fleet” reflects America’s continued desire to pursue global primacy, thus the requirement for a fleet capable of projecting global power.
The “Trump class” “battleships” announced are purely for power projection globally, not the defense of the US “homeland,” and feature yet-to-be-deployed technology designed solely to take on and destroy advanced Russian and Chinese defensive systems within Russia and China themselves.
Unfortunately for US ambitions, China is building somewhere around 200x more ships each year than the US – including both commercial and military vessels. These vessels are as sophisticated and capable as US counterparts and, in some cases, more advanced.
In order to catch up, the US is attempting to expand both its own shipbuilding capacity after decades of industrial atrophy as well as leveraging its control over proxies like South Korea and Japan to build and repair US vessels for America.
This campaign is another blatant reminder that the US continues to seek primacy over the globe, including active measures to prevent the emergence of other peer and near-peer adversaries. Nothing President Trump or his predecessors have been doing in recent years indicates any sort of retreat otherwise.
2 How feasible is this idea to create high-tech large fleet for US? What problems can the US face during construction?
ANSWER: US ambitions to build a vast high-tech fleet are fantastical – ambitions that far exceed America’s actual reach in terms of military industrial production. US shipbuilding is inhibited by a severe lack of skilled laborers, few adequate industrial facilities, inadequate infrastructure, and insufficient supply chains to support the sort of production to do so in any reasonable time or within any reasonable budget.
In order to properly address these shortcomings, the US would need to reform everything from its education system to its broader industrial base, as well as energy production, national transportation infrastructure and healthcare. It is a process that could take years, even decades to complete (if done properly) and attempts to find shortcuts will come at the expense of all Americans – except perhaps the private corporations receiving contracts to build these military vessels.
3 What potential backlash might US experience from such an increase in defense [I would have said ‘defense’] spending?
ANSWER: Expanding the US military budget in pursuit of global-dominating military forces including a vast, high-tech navy will divert human resources and funding away from essential infrastructure required by the actual American people living in the United States.
A nation’s infrastructure plays a direct role in industrial production. A lack of adequate energy, transportation, and healthcare impacts the human resources and material necessities required for the production of anything, especially systems as large and as complex as naval vessels.
Thus, misallocating huge sums of resources to build ships the US doesn’t actually need and really doesn’t have the ability to efficiently build, is only going to accelerate the ongoing damage being done to all other aspects of American infrastructure and industry, ironically making it that much more difficult to pursue the few projects the US is prioritizing.
US ‘Golden Fleet’ is wishful thinking, not military reality – former Marine
“US ambitions to build a vast high-tech fleet are fantastical – ambitions that far exceed America’s actual reach in terms of military industrial production,” Brian Berletic, veteran geopolitical analyst and former US Marine, tells Sputnik
“US shipbuilding is inhibited by a severe lack of skilled laborers, few adequate industrial facilities, inadequate infrastructure, and insufficient supply chains,” he says
NEW VIDEO: A New Space Race Above Earth May Determine Who Prevails Upon It
On YouTube:
“The lopsided access to space afforded by reusable launch systems means placing not only larger and more capable satellite constellations into orbit, it also means being able to target and remove the constellations of others from orbit. In the rush to replace lost satellites, the nation able to launch cheaper and more often will have the advantage – an advantage currently residing with the US.
The prospect of placing armed weapon systems into orbit adds additional danger to this already lopsided balance of power in orbit, creating an equally lopsided balance of power back on Earth.”
youtube.com
A New Space Race Above Earth May Determine Who Prevails Upon It
“The lopsided access to space afforded by reusable launch systems means placing not only larger and more capable satellite constellations into orbit, it also…
On Rumble:
On Fantasy Weapons Programs like the “Trump Class Battleship”
The ship will be nuclear powered and relies on a number of weapons and technology that either don’t exist or have not been proven yet.
The entire purpose of this vessel is to maintain GLOBAL primacy.
It will supposedly have hypersonic missiles the US would use to hit Russian and Chinese air and naval defense systems INSIDE both nations.
Nothing about any of it would be required to actually defend the US itself.
As ambitious as it is and as unlikely it is to succeed, if such a concept does ever make sense in the 2030s, China will be able to build more of such vessels, faster.
Ultimately, it is yet another blatant indicator the US is dangerously and wastefully clinging to empire rather than “adapting to multipolarism.”
NEW ARTICLE: A New Space Race Above Earth May Determine Who Prevails Upon It
(NOTE: Because X blocks NEO links here, I will post the entire article below to read…)
In early December 2025, private Chinese aerospace company, LandSpace, test-launched its Zhuque-3 rocket. The rocket is designed to place payloads into Earth orbit while recovering its first stage booster, much like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch system and now Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket.
The launch was a partial success. The second stage successfully reached orbit while the first stage struck the landing pad hundreds of miles downrange destroying it. Despite an obvious anomaly preventing a successful landing – industry analysts concluded the attempted landing came spectacularly close for a first attempt.
It took Falcon 9 several attempts before successfully landing its first stage booster, and more recently, US-based aerospace company Blue Origin 2 attempts to successfully land New Glenn’s first stage.
Blue Origin is only the second company to do so after US-based SpaceX which – for years now – has routinely launched payloads to orbit with its Falcon 9 launch vehicle while recovering and reusing Falcon’s first stage boosters.
The Reusable Rocket Revolution
SpaceX has refined this process of launching and recovering first stage boosters to the extent of launching, landing, recovering, and turning around boosters for their next launch within 30 days.
The rapid reusability of SpaceX’ Falcon 9 has already revolutionized access to Earth orbit – drastically reducing costs while vastly expanding the number of launches possible per year. Blue Origin, should it successfully repeat New Glenn’s recent success while scaling up production and its launch cadence, would expand US access to orbit even further.
Rapid reusability allows for the deployment of vast constellations of satellites over vastly shorter periods of time. SpaceX’ Starlink constellation, a low earth orbit network of 8,000+ communication satellites improves global coverage and significantly reduces signal latency over older, less numerous existing satellite communication networks located in higher, geostationary orbits.
Such constellations lend significant advantages to the nations who deploy and have access to them.
As demonstrated in Ukraine, networks like SpaceX’s Starlink don’t just improve civilian satellite communication, but also enhance military communication as well as providing links to long-range drones (especially naval drones) line-of-sight radio signals cannot match.
SpaceX has provided a significant advantage to the US commercially and militarily – an advantage the US seeks to fully exploit, and do so far beyond Starlink.
For example, the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has enlisted SpaceX and its Starlink platform to develop what is calls, “Starshield,” essentially a military version of Starlink, merging its communication capabilities together with target tracking, optical and signal surveillance, as well as early missile warning capabilities.
Between being publicly announced in 2022 to present day, nearly 200 Starshield satellites have been placed into orbit – an achievement that would have been impossible without SpaceX and its fleet of reusable launch systems – and an achievement other nations like Russia and China cannot currently match.
Russia, China Playing Catch Up
While nations like Russia and China have their own constellations of civilian and military satellites, neither have constellations as large as the US primarily because of limitations on how quickly launches can be conducted to place them into orbit.
Throughout 2025, for example, the US conducted (approximately) 170 launches versus China’s 78, and Russia’s 15.
In previous years, China had actually overtaken the US in annual launches. However, with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch system, this balance has been decisively tilted back in America’s favor.
Zhuque-3 test launches are expected to continue throughout 2026 with the company aiming to continue reaching orbit while finally successfully landing the first stage booster. From there, it will depend on how quickly and reliably LandSpace can repeat this success as well as how fast it can expand both rocket production and supporting infrastructure to significantly expand its launch cadence.
Just as SpaceX – a single aerospace company – has radically expanded US access to orbit, LandSpace could be positioned to do likewise for China.
However, just as the US now has Blue Origin pursuing its own reusable launch system, China has several other private companies and state-owned enterprises aiming to do likewise.
Private company Space Pioneer with its Tianlong-3 rocket and China’s Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology – under the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) – with its Long March 12A rocket are both planning to launch and possibly attempt to recover first stage boosters in late 2025 to early 2026.
Both rockets represent systems similar in size and with roughly similar potential capabilities as SpaceX’s Falcon 9.
Russia, on the other hand, had announced its Amur (or Soyuz-7) launch system as a candidate for reusable launches, but has drastically delayed its development to prioritize the production and launch of existing rockets, including newer launch systems much closer to completion. This includes continued Soyuz crewed and uncrewed flights, Proton launches, the planned initial launch of Soyuz-5 which is intended to replace the older Proton system, and continued launches of Russia’s relatively new family of Angara rockets.
Thus, the likelihood of Russia developing its own reusable launch capability in the near future is low. However, as a close partner with China, it will likely benefit from any success China achieves in the near future in a variety of ways.
Purpose-Driven Capabilities Exploited by Primacy-Driven Interests
SpaceX and Blue Origin ostensibly claim their primary objective is to expand humanity beyond Earth. SpaceX has been focused on the colonization of Mars while Blue Origin’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has made proposals for massive orbital habitats (similar to those proposed by physicist Gerard K. O’Neill in the 1970s) in his 2019 “For the Benefit of Earth” talk.
Both companies are also participating in NASA’s bid to return human beings to the moon.
However, whatever truth there is behind these purpose-driven objectives, both US-based companies exist within a profit-driven system engaged in the pursuit of global primacy, increasingly using the capabilities these companies have developed not “for the benefit of Earth,” but to dominate it.
Blue Origin-developed rocket engines, the BE-4, have already been used on joint Lockheed-Boeing United Launch Alliance (ULA) missions for the US NRO.
In addition to SpaceX’s collaboration with the NRO in the creation of Starshield, it has for years regularly conducted launches for the US Space Force, and before that, the US Air Force. These capabilities, in turn, have enabled continued US global military encroachment and aggression targeting both Russia and China’s partners and allies, as well as threatening both nations themselves.
SpaceX is an anomaly amid the US aerospace industry – an industry that has for decades been driven by the pursuit of profit over any other purpose, including innovation.
Before SpaceX’s Falcon 9 became operational, most US national security payloads were launched using United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V and Delta IV rockets. Both rockets were fully expendable. Their designs represented upgrades of rockets and systems from as early as the 1960’s. Because ULA (and before that, Boeing and Lockheed which merged to create ULA) held a monopoly over orbital launches and existed solely to maximize profit – there was no need to innovate. Any excess revenue diverted toward research and development would only have undermined shareholder primacy.
SpaceX, a private corporation founded by Elon Musk, disrupted the comfortable monopoly Boeing and Lockheed enjoyed, prioritizing rapid innovation over shareholder profits. Not only has SpaceX succeeded in cutting edge innovation, it is also making profits and outcompeting Boeing and Lockheed’s ULA.
Initially, lobbyists representing established aerospace corporations attempted to block SpaceX’s entry into government launches. Today, US policy think tanks funded by corporations like Boeing and Lockheed, hold SpaceX up as an example of the innovation possible because of the American system. In reality, SpaceX succeeded despite it.
These same policymakers now seek to exploit the capabilities a purpose-driven SpaceX developed to enhance the continued profit and power-driven pursuit of US primacy.
Russia and China, on the other hand, have entirely purpose-driven state-owned enterprises engaged in every aspect of national development – from energy production, to military industrial production, and aerospace research and development.
Russia’s limitations come in the form of its smaller population and economy and the constraints placed on it by ongoing US containment and confrontation, especially amid the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine. While it is unlikely Russia can now match or exceed the capabilities enabled by SpaceX, Russia had previously surpassed the US in terms of launch capabilities – at one point shuttling US astronauts to and from the International Space Station for years because of the inability of US aerospace monopolies to develop a timely replacement for the Space Shuttle.
China, on the other hand, has a larger economy, a vastly larger industrial base, more modern and extensive infrastructure, and millions more STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) graduates each year than the US. Together with purpose-driven state-owned enterprises and national policy promoting purpose-driven private business, China has already surpassed the United States across a number of fields and will almost certainly surpass US space launch capabilities in both quality and quantity, barring extreme preemptive measures taken by the US.
A New Space Race – New Rules
SpaceX’s Elon Musk, in regards to the test launch of Zhuque-3, remarked that even if it is successful, by the time it reaches large-scale production and use, SpaceX’s next-generation launch system – Starship – will have surpassed it.
However, linear comparisons to China’s development have proven tragically flawed.
Just because it took years for China to catch up to the US in terms of space launch capabilities before SpaceX pushed the US back into the lead, and now it has taken several more years for China to begin developing and testing its own reusable rockets, doesn’t mean it will take the same amount of time to match SpaceX’s Starship, or that China won’t be able to leapfrog US space launch capabilities altogether.
China is already developing the super-heavy Long March 9 and 10 launch systems meant to perform the same roles as SpaceX’s Starship, with engine production and testing already ongoing.
While the US has one purpose-driven space launch company – perhaps two (Blue Origin) – China represents a vastly larger purpose-driven nation with all the ingredients necessary to not only rapidly match the US, but permanently surpass it.
In an overall military, economic, and industrial competition the US is losing to China in virtually all regards, it is unlikely to maintain its advantage over China in terms of space launch capabilities – especially considering these capabilities were developed despite the primary characteristics of America’s socio-economic and political system, not because of it.
Should China fail to catch up to the US for a variety of reasons – including ongoing US ambitions to encircle and contain China with chaos, conflict, and even proxy war in the same manner it has done so to Russia – a large and dangerous advantage will be given to the US who has long-since demonstrated an eager desire to fully exploit it economically and even militarily.
The lopsided access to space afforded by reusable launch systems means placing not only larger and more capable satellite constellations into orbit, it also means being able to target and remove the constellations of others from orbit.
This includes the use of co-orbital satellites (sometimes called “killer satellites” or “inspector satellites”) able to approach the satellites of other nations. Nations like the US with a high launch cadence can quickly put new, more advanced co-orbital satellites into orbit, or replace any losses from an adversary’s co-orbital or anti-satellite capabilities.
This represents a lopsided balance of power in orbit, creating a potentially lopsided balance of power back on Earth.
Only time will tell whether or not China’s ability to match the US in all matters on Earth can be extended over this new space race above it.
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