Back to Barbarity
Human history is like a pendulum, swinging back and forth between progress and retrogression...prosperity and poverty...civilization and barbarity.
Wednesday, January 7th, 2026
Bill Bonner, from Baltimore, Maryland
On to Greenland! CBS News:
White House discussing range of options for acquiring Greenland, Leavitt says.
But whoa. Let’s slow down. We look back to the ‘indictment’ of Nicolas Maduro for a residue of ‘due process of law.’ He is to be tried by a legitimate court on legitimate charges. No mention of Fentanyl. No reference to the mythical group, Cartel de los Soles. Nothing about stealing oil. Instead, he’s charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine.
Readers might wonder why the time and unique skills of US military forces...and billions of dollars...should be engaged in what is really a relatively minor law-enforcement effort. The engineers actually built a replica of the Venezuelan presidential palace, so US troops could rehearse without scaling a high wall or bumping their heads on a low door. As it turned out, they all came back, as if from a lark, safe and sound, with nary a scratch or a powder burn.
Why bother?
Everyone knows the supply of cocaine in the US will not go down, not by one jot or tittle, thanks to this headline kidnapping. But that is the advantage of asymmetric power. You don’t have to justify your actions. We kidnap them; they don’t kidnap us. We bomb Nigerians; they don’t bomb us. We lay down the law...and then walk all over it. We don’t need a good excuse.
Another example is America’s partner, Israel. With US backing, last year, Israel attacked Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria and Yemen. It also carried out strikes against flotillas that were trying to bring aid to Gaza. The number of attacks was breath-taking — a total of 10,631 up to December 5th, 2025. You can’t do that unless you’re pretty sure they can’t strike back.
But watch out. Asymmetry is a temptation to wickedness. The gods will put up with it — even relish it — for a long time. But not forever. Then, asymmetry flips.
Human history is a pendulum, swinging back and forth between progress and retrogression...prosperity and poverty...civilization and barbarity.
The material and technical progress of humankind is manifest, all around us. It seems to go forward, step by step, with little backsliding. Indoor plumbing and refrigeration, for example, are clear winners. Once installed, people rarely want to live without them.
But not every new thing is ‘progress.’ A baby born in the US today immediately takes on his share of a $38 trillion debt — about $115,000 each. Is that progress?
In human affairs, progress, if there is any, is tentative and cyclical. After WWII, steps were taken toward a more foreseeable, and more civilized, world. The US Department of War was renamed the Department of Defense in 1947. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights was put forward in 1948. The Geneva Convention came out in 1949. All were intended to avoid another WWII-type bloodbath..
Trump’s re-re-renaming of the War Department tells us all we need to know about the direction this administration is headed. It is leading a counter-trend, returning to an era where nations use their power to get what they want. The Trump team bombs Nigeria and kidnaps the first couple of Venezuela not because it is fulfilling the law, but because it is thumbing its nose at it.
But if it is okay for the US to take out the president of Venezuela and put in a puppet of its choice, shouldn’t it be okay for China to do the same with Taiwan? China has asymmetric power too.
And Russia with the Donbas? The US gave $175 billion to the Ukraine to stop Russia from asserting control. But why? America has its reasons for attacking Venezuela. Russia must have its own reasons for taking up arms against the Ukraine.
‘Equal rights’ and the ‘rule of law’ are just concepts. They make human interactions seem ‘fair’ and predictable. But they are not guaranteed, neither by God nor by man. And if an advanced race of aliens landed on the White House lawn, they would have the asymmetric upper hand. Would they respect the Bill of Rights? Would they file US income taxes? Would they stop their space mobiles for red traffic signals and leave handicapped spaces for cripples?
Not likely.
And now that Trump, supposedly, has control over the vast oil reserves of Venezuela, the coast is clear for the US to join forces with the Israelis to pull off an even bigger caper. Until now, or so goes the logic, the US was afraid Iran could crush the worldwide economy by cutting off oil supplies. According to the scuttlebutt on the internet, one of the reasons Trump attacked Venezuela was to neutralize that threat. Now, Trump — working with the new Vichy Venezuela — has control over 300 billion barrels of oil reserves. And now, with that accomplished, a bigger war in the Mideast can go forward.
Antiwar.com:
Trump Says He’ll Support an Israeli Attack on Iran If Tehran ‘Continues’ Its Missile ProgramThe president made the comments at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida before a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when asked if he would back more Israeli attacks on Iran. “If they continue with the missiles, yes. The nuclear, fast,” he said.
Yes, the US may continue the noble work of George W. Bush, hunting for Weapons of Mass Destruction! And with similar results. America’s real influence will probably go down, as the widening circle of ‘enemies’ finds ways to get even.
This is not so much a ‘paradox’ as it is an obvious and predictable swing of the pendulum.
Regards,
Bill Bonner
Research Note, by Dan Denning
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Two things always jump out. The first is the complete absence of the sort of analysis as to who “threw the first punch”. With regard to the Israeli-Hamas imbroglio, it was indisputably Hamas. Coordinated by Iran, with their “mob” back up of The Houthis and Hezbollah That Israeli then kicks their ass shouldn’t be held against Israel - or the U.S. for that matter. It’s not as though the real antagonists weren’t given the FAFO warnings. The second thing that jumps out is the obvious naïveté of critics of this alpha dog POTUS. They blithely overlook the milquetoast leadership damage that preceded this point in history. A telegraphing of weakness out into a hostile world which now needs to be set right. One extreme set of factors, now requiring an equally extreme response to the other - the “first punch thrown” at our nation by our faint hearted domestic voices, which damage, they still don’t fully understand
Bill Bonner:
“There is surely a ‘reason’ for all this violence. But you could ask 100 million Americans and probably not discover what it is.”
Ask a hundred million Americans why the violence is happening and you’ll get a hundred million blank stares and one guy yelling “terrorism” like it’s a magic spell. Because when you don’t know the reason, you just chant the word louder.
Those poor Somalis. They pay a “big price.” For what? For existing in the general vicinity of American boredom. No oil, no money, no orchestra. And yet they still qualify for precision democracy, delivered at altitude.
One hundred twenty-seven strikes. That’s not strategy, that’s nervous tapping with explosives. That’s a government pacing the room going, “What else we got? Somalia again? Sure, why not, they’re still there.”
Ask a hundred million Americans why it’s happening and you’ll get a hundred million blank stares and one guy yelling “terrorism” like it’s a magic spell. Because when you don’t know the reason, you just chant the word louder.
This is how empires rot. They start swinging at shadows, confusing motion with meaning. Bombing the defenseless isn’t power, it’s insecurity with a flight budget. History isn’t impressed. History has seen this idiot before.
Somalia has nothing. That’s the crime. No leverage. No lobbyists. No “please clap.” Just people trying to survive while the US uses them as a stress ball.
And the list keeps growing. Nigeria, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Venezuela. At this point US foreign policy looks like a dartboard made out of countries nobody in Congress can pronounce.
Then came the kidnapping. Not a coup, not an invasion, Kidnapping. That’s a felony, not a doctrine. And announcing you’re going to “run” the country afterward? That’s not empire. That’s a hostile takeover run by people who can’t manage a budget or a website.
You don’t stabilize anything. You just knock over the same mess in a new direction and call it leadership.
It seems odd to bomb a place repeatedly when you can’t remember why you started, but Somalia doesn’t have oil, Venezuela does. That feels like a clue, not a big clue, just a subtle one. Like when a gal says she’s dating you for your personality but keeps checking your wallet.
They say they’re fixing things. That’s nice. I say I’m fixing my life every morning. Then I lie down again.
Running another country is hard. Running your own country is hard. Doing both at the same time while borrowing money you don’t have feels ambitious. Or stupid. I get those mixed up.
Anyway, History usually lets you finish digging before it asks why you needed the hole.