Among the arguments of those who seem to be pushing for expanded war with the Russian Federation, one of the strangest is that Russia is a weak, third-world country and a “paper tiger.” Those who make this argument point to the protracted three-year conflict in Ukraine and scoff at the Russians’ inability to subjugate a much weaker adversary. These same voices usually ignore America’s ten-year war in Iraq and twenty-year war in Afghanistan, even though both wars cost Americans much and accomplished far fewer strategic objectives than Americans were promised.
Russia has chosen to execute a war of attrition that wears down Ukrainians’ will to fight. At the same time, it has refrained from unleashing destruction on the scale of Dresden or Hiroshima that might trigger a wider U.S.-NATO response. Three and a half years into the war, the Ukrainian people are desperate for the conflict to end. So far, the war has been primarily limited to the territories of Russia and Ukraine. From Russia’s point of view, Putin is threading the needle.
What is particularly discordant about calling Russia a “paper tiger” is that so many of the people who make this assertion simultaneously warn that Russia is preparing to conquer all of Europe. In one breath, Senator Lindsey Graham, special envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg, or former secretary of State Hillary Clinton describes Russia as a backward country whose nuclear capabilities pose little threat to the United States. In the next breath, these same voices argue that Russia intends to reconstruct the Soviet Union and envassal the nations of Europe. Online commenters mock the Russian bear as having no real teeth but then insist that France and Germany will soon see Russian tanks in the streets.
It is true that Russia has a smaller population than the United States or the combined countries of the European Union. With a hundred and fifty million citizens, though, it is still one of the largest nations — by population — in the world. By landmass, Russia controls nearly twice as much territory as the second largest country, Canada. For centuries, Japan, China, France, the Turkish Empire, and the United Kingdom have attempted to take parts of Russia for their own, yet Russia has endured. Even after a century of suicidal communism and post–Cold War chaos, the Russian people share a common identity that is as strong as anywhere else in the world. Russia is a nation of people who actually define themselves by their ability to endure hardship. While “woke” Westerners cry about pronouns and celebrate victimhood, most Russians are preparing for prolonged war.
Those who belittle Russia as no real threat to the superior military of the United States often dismiss its nuclear arsenal. With as many warheads as the U.S. and the capability to deploy them by air, land, and sea, Russia remains a deadly foe, regardless of its relatively low per capita GDP. Russia’s new Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile can reportedly deliver six warheads (each containing six submunitions) at speeds exceeding Mach 10. Although Western analysts have a range of views regarding the Oreshnik’s effectiveness, it is a hypersonic weapon potentially capable of reaching all of Europe without interception.
Those who do not fear the fallout of a U.S.-Russia war seem to think Russia would be foolish to use nuclear weapons because doing so would guarantee its annihilation. For those who think this way, I would pose this question: If American sovereignty were one day threatened, would we refrain from using nuclear weapons?
Such a scenario might seem unrealistic right now, but our world is rapidly reshaping into a multipolar one. India (our ally/competitor) and China (our adversary/enemy) are home to three billion citizens. Should those two countries put aside their historic differences and ally against the United States in the coming decades, the size of our military forces might be small by comparison.
Although the U.S.-controlled financial system has given America the wealth to exert power across the globe, there may come a day when that same system crashes and we find ourselves in economic straits. Whereas China and India have grown their industrial and manufacturing sectors over the last three decades, the U.S. has offshored its most critical industries. We are now reliant upon those who will one day challenge American hegemony.
It is not so difficult to imagine a time when America’s lethal military infrastructure remains the only deterrent keeping predators at bay. If America were ever pushed into a corner and its existence were at stake, would we hesitate to use the worst weapons in our arsenal to beat back those who threaten us? And if we would use them under duress, why would we expect any less from the Russian Federation?
There is an idea that has long been discussed in the august lecture halls of the West’s diplomatic houses. It concerns a desire to break Russia into a dozen separate nations. Using the same “divide and rule” tactics and strategies that have been employed since ancient times, the West would like nothing more than to foment public rebellion inside Russia. Pulling such a mission off would be the magnum opus among the West’s numerous information warfare-driven “color revolutions” this century. Dissolving Russia into a dozen states would allow the United States and the European Union to play them off each other, exploit their natural resources, and keep them geopolitically weak. Every few years, some retired head of state or diplomatic heavyweight has one too many glasses of wine and acknowledges that a post-Putin world provides the ideal opportunity to carve up all of Russia.
What would we do if our enemies were so bold as to begin carving up the lands of the United States? I suspect that many of us would fight to the death. We should expect the Russian people — who view themselves as part of a historic civilization — to do the same.
I have become less optimistic that war with Russia can be prevented — primarily because U.S., European, and Russian officials all appear to be confirming that things will get worse. Speaking from a summit in Copenhagen days ago, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán warned that “the E.U. has decided to go to war” against Russia. Elaborating, Orbán described the situation as “serious” and said that “outright pro-war proposals” are being quickly advanced.
Meanwhile, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen accuses Russia of using drones, sabotage, and hybrid warfare to divide Europe and describes Russia as Europe’s “primary enemy.” European politicians are hyperventilating so much about phantom Russian drones that Munich’s airport even shut down because some people saw mysterious lights in the sky. European leaders are shoveling paranoia and hysteria to the public on an industrial scale (while “green”-energy regulations kill the rest of their industries).
Speaking at the Valdai International Discussion Club last week, Russian president Vladimir Putin said Europe’s “ruling elites … continue to whip up hysteria” and stated soberly that “all NATO countries are fighting us, and they’re no longer hiding it.” He mocked the idea that Russia had any intention of attacking NATO but assured listeners that Russia is prepared for a larger war.
Similarly, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov recently observed, “NATO and the European Union … have already declared a real war on my country and are directly participating in it.”
Finally, Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin — a man whom some call “Putin’s brain” — recently penned an essay in which he concluded that “we cannot avoid a big world war,” that “monstrous trials await mankind,” and that what’s happening “now will seem like child’s play compared to what is ahead.”
Europe wants war. Russia is ready for war. War it will be.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.