Tom Stevenson is a contributing editor at the LRB. His collection of essays, Someone Else’s Empire: British Illusions and American Hegemony, many of which first appeared in the paper, was published in 2023.
On 2 June the British government finally published its Strategic Defence Review on the state of the UK armed forces. When it was commissioned, in July 2024, Keir Starmer described it as ‘first of its kind’ and ‘root and branch’ – a clear indication that it would be nothing of the sort. This was the fourth defence review in the past five years, with two more...
The US has declared an uncertain and messy end to its attack on Iran. Trump announced a ceasefire some hours before it was acknowledged by Israel and Iran, and later said both sides had violated it (‘they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing,’ he complained). Overall it seems likely to hold, for a while at least.
Israel’s codename for its attack on Iran, launched last Friday, was Operation Rising Lion, a pointed reference to the pre-1979 Iranian national flag, a lion before a rising sun. Israel and the US seem to hope that they can shatter the Iranian state and induce civil unrest. This is an attempt at regime change, or regime destruction, poorly disguised as an anti-nuclear operation.
In 2019, a group of scientists led by Owen Toon, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, modelled the climatic effects of a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan in 2025. The hypothetical scenario was a militant attack on the Indian parliament, leading to mobilisation along the Line of Control. Skirmishes in Kashmir escalate and the Indian army crosses into Pakistan, prompting a nuclear war.
The Trump court is a royal progress that moves between Palm Beach and the White House, for the most part in private planes. But the interests of the US government require that at least some of its members be willing to travel farther afield than Florida. Trump talks of putting the US economy behind a great tariff wall, but he also wants deals, which means he needs dealers. America’s official chief diplomat is the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, but so far his activities have been fairly limited. Instead, the role of principal US emissary is currently filled by the unlikely figure of the property developer Steve Witkoff.
Tom Stevenson talks to Thomas Jones about the situation in Ukraine, the effectiveness of some of the weapons in use, from anti-tank missiles to economic sanctions, and the risk of nuclear escalation.
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