The Iranian war is driving up oil prices and as a logical consequence of the Persian Gulf largely being off-line since oil tankers travelling it have a high risk of being sunk by Iranian missiles and drones. With Iran’s oil and gas offline as well as Russian oil being proscribed with sanctions, and Venezuelan oil under the control of the U.S. government indirectly, several primary global oil supplies are temporarily reduced. Oman, Kuwait and Qatar’s facilities were attaacked by Iran. Supply and demand is still in effect with the basic mitigating element being invention; shortages stimulate inventions of alternative product.
Ukraine stopped Russian petroleum products from flowing to Hungary and the Czech Republic, and plans to destroy pipelines in the Black Sea reaching Turkey- those are additional ways to put the squeeze upon Europe and Russia. Because Iran attacked a British naval post on Cyprus the U.K. has said it will support the U.S.-Israel war on Iran. Germany has also expressed an intention to provide support to the forces seeking to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons development. The high cost of gas at the pump in the U.S.A. may agitate Democrats and Zelensky hoping for a Republican loss in the mid-term elections in November, yet the cost of oil may be plummeting before November when voters decide with wallets and purses hoping Democrats as the sole alternative bring a deflating effect for consumers; though billions and billions would be spent on day care.
Saudi Arabia’s main refining and loading terminal is also on the Persian Gulf- Ras Tanura. Ninety percent of Saudi oil is exported through the Persian Gulf and with Saudi oil shipments temporarily suspended because of drone attacks on the refinery and on ships, even with a surfeit of world oil production normally, during the Iran and Ukraine wars oil prices are anticipated to go north of 100 dollars per barrel. That is good news for red states and yet not too bad for blue as they move more toward electric vehicles. The cost of sunshine is not expected to increase in 2026 unless more cloudy days develop.
France has decided to make a nuclear shell game with nuclear armed aircraft that it will loan to other European countries including, it seems, Ukraine. That is a radical attack on the nuclear containment policy that was created during the Cold War and supported by Russians and Americans. France has created a loose nukes policy that will make it very difficult for Russia to track possible nuclear attack vectors upon Moscow and other strategic targets. The French policy, given the short time span that a hypersonic nuclear armed missile needs to reach Moscow, will induce a policy revision for Moscow’s use of nuclear weapons; response to attack may not leave enough time to counterattack. So preemptive first strikes on select European targets may become reflexive for Russia’s strategic nuclear force. The French nuclear airport shell game will make it challenging to know which aircraft taking flight is making a nuclear strike on Russia. If such aircraft are located in Ukraine—given Zelensky’s record—Russia may have little choice besides engaging in nuclear war with Europe. Since Russia hasn’t used nuclear weapons in the war and had no intention to except for real disaster, the French loose nukes shell game policy is in no way a deterrent. It is instead a provocation for a first strike by Russia on Paris and additional nuclear targets of France.
Forward-deployed nuclear-capable aircraft in proximity to Russian territory may lower the perceived survivability of Russian strategic assets, thereby increasing incentives for rapid escalation under crisis conditions. The combination of compressed hypersonic timelines and distributed basing introduces structural instability into deterrence doctrine, particularly where launch origin becomes ambiguous and decision time shrinks to minutes rather than hours.
The French factor has placed an egoistical, opportunistic nuclear power that was largely absent during the Cold War from NATO for its own security priorities, in a junction between global war and peace. The loose nukes airport shell game with nuclear weapons is a direct threat to global security and a reason why the United States should no longer be a member of NATO to enable the swollen perfidy.The French factor has placed a rogue nuclear power that was largely absent during the Cold War from NATO for its own security priorities, in a junction between global war and peace. The loose nukes airport shell game with nuclear weapons is a direct threat to global security and a reason why the United States should no longer be a member of NATO to enable the swollen perfidy.
The future may see other nations following the French lead and loaning aircraft with nuclear weapons to other countries. That could pose a direct threat to the United States with nuclear weapons aircraft launching from third party countries like Greenland, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, etc., should the Chinese or Russians reach agreements with them. If forward deployment and cross-border loaning of nuclear-capable aircraft becomes normalized among mid-tier nuclear powers, the long-term nonproliferation norm may gradually erode. States such as Pakistan could justify extended nuclear basing under a regional or religious security umbrella rationale, while regimes like North Korea might attempt similar leverage through dependent or aligned states. The danger is not immediate probability but cumulative precedent: once nuclear dispersal beyond sovereign territory becomes politically acceptable, the structural barriers restraining broader nuclear patronage networks weaken over time. This policy risks undermining crisis stability by reducing clarity about launch origin and intent. It only requires 20 or 30 modern nukes to go off to bring global winter into effect.
Arnold Toynbee, in Mankind and Mother Earth (1974), observed that there was now just one global civilization. That civilization may be as internally contentious as red and blue states divided over religion and forms of government, yet all of it recognizes the same cultural markers — the Beatles, Muhammad Ali, Donald Trump, Coca-Cola. We share a planetary consciousness even while we quarrel. A civilization that outdoes itself in nuclear brinkmanship, in the absence of creative and thoughtful political leadership, may discover that it cannot survive its own degraded thought — like a brain under alcohol, narrowing its perception to local impulses while forgetting the global body to which it belongs.
Garrison Gibson: books and blog 
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