“You f****d up. You trusted us.”

The weekly update from Phillips P. O’Brien has a scathing discussion of just how badly Saudi Arabia and Ukraine have been betrayed by reliance on the United States.

Two states in particular are paying a great price this week for trusting in the USA—those are Saudi Arabia and Ukraine (and through all of Ukraine, Europe as well). Both states are getting bombarded by their enemies and are either being abandoned by the USA or, in the case of Ukraine, are seeing these attacks being supported by the USA. It is a lesson that needed to be learned long before this, but sadly was not. The depressing thing is that things will only get worse and that will be the first story in this update.

The second part of this midweek update will cover the fast-developing story of how the US government is now dealing a major blow to the Ukrainian war effort through limiting Ukraine’s access to Starlink/Spaceshield, over the territory of Ukraine. This started being reported on yesterday morning and represents the greatest overt act of the United States as it attempts to crush Ukrainian democracy on behalf of Russia’s Putinist dictatorship. The primer will go through what has happened, why it matters so much and how it came about (probably). It will also mention some important early signs of blowback. This really is one of those decisions that will live in infamy.

At the end of that will be a short word of warning for what this all means for Europe and the rest of the world. The USA is showing everyone what vulnerability truly means. I do hope you are paying attention.

A quick summary. For decades Saudi Arabia has subcontracted its defense to the United States. The problem with that is the current management at Trump America Inc. has no interest in honoring those defense agreements, the Saudis never really learned how to do it on their own, and the Houthis are stepping up attacks, which among other things, could reduce global oil supplies even more.

Ukraine’s dependency is more excusable in that they had few other choices, but the open hostility of Trump towards Zelensky has escalated. Now Trump/Musk are actively sabotaging the Starlink service they need to operate their critical weapons systems. (Although pushback may force the Trump regime to back down.) Ukrainians are dying because of this – and Russia is pressing the war now that Trump is openly supporting them.

As O’Brien notes, this should bring home to Europe and other countries around the world that America is no longer a reliable partner – and should be seen more as a potential adversary. NATO is talking about plans to counter Russia – but given that the U.S. support is no longer assured, that’s problematic to say the least.

Closer to the U.S., Canada has contingency plans to deal with U.S. military action across the border, and is looking at alternatives to Starlink. Canada is also committed to stop automatically relying on U.S. built weapons systems. (An order for Blackhawk helicopters was just halted.)

There’s no going back to the old world order. As O’Brien says:

This is why, btw, I have a mirthless chuckle when I hear people talk about things going back to where they were before Trump. That is because the US is demonstrating overtly and more emphatically by the minute that it cannot be trusted and building your security on a reliable USA is a fool’s game.

READ THE WHOLE THING. O’Brien goes into much more detail on just how bad the situation is for both Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, and the rest of what we used to call the Free World.

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