Date: Monday, 09 June 2025
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/the-go-to-expert-among-experts-on-0dd
https://theduran.com/the-go-to-expert-among-experts-on-international-affairs/
The Go-To Expert Among Experts on International Affairs:
The Man Who Informs Virtually All Experts on U.S. Geostrategy
8 June 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
Alexander Mercouris is a member of one of Greece’s leading families in diplomacy and also the arts, who, because of this and because of his wide travels and total-recall memory and encyclopedic knowledge of the history and legal systems of almost all nations, started in 2016 the international-affairs website “The Duran,” where he every day provides commentaries of 30 to 90 minutes, regarding the most important things that are happening between the world’s major powers: America, Russia, China, the EU, UK, Israel, and Iran — and including also all of the nations that are allied with or heavily dependent upon any of them. I have followed his commentaries for almost a decade, and never yet found him to have said anything that was false. He certainly is remarkably reliable. In 2016, shortly after The Duran started, he and his friend and colleague Alex Christoforou, invited me to post on their site, and I have done so, but I have no relationship, financial or otherwise, with them, other than that I post on their site. In any case, his sources include not only news-media from around the world (and he always describes accurately the slant of the medium and of its reporter), but also the official governmental read-outs on each side of international conversations, and his expert decryptions of their meanings as understood from within the diplomatic professions, and his sources are also his personal contacts with highly placed though not top-level anonymous persons whom he has, in the past, found always to have been honest with him about the events that he’s covering. He constantly says that he is no expert on military matters, but has constantly displayed that among his anonymous personal sources are extremely reliable persons who are; and, so, even on military matters, he has been, in retrospect, perhaps the best of all real-time public analysts on those matters, too. His understanding of economics is also vast.
What makes him essential both to governments and to international-relations experts is his extraordinary (if not unique) ability to penetrate, on a real-time basis, to the core of the day’s most important news-events concerning international relations, including all aspects, diplomatic, economic, and military, as-if he is a one-person Director of International Intelligence, who combines within himself, all of the rare personal gifts and knowledge-backgrounds, that are necessary in order to be able to do this. Although there are others who might come close, such as Larry C. Johnson, Scott Ritter, Col. Douglas Macgregor, Lawrence Wilkerson, Brian Berletic, the “Moon of Alabama” blogger, and “Simplicius76” (all of whom are very strong on the military side but not on the diplomatic side), and Peter Hanseler (whose strengths are especially on the economic side), there aren’t many.
Mercouris’s June 7th commentary focused on the U.S.-UK-Ukraine-Russia matter, and here was a highlight from it:
https://theduran.com/moscow-will-target-kiev-leaders-us-turns-against-zelensky
3:27
Whatever success
3:30
it may have achieved in terms of physical destruction of Russian aircraft,
3:37
and the more information I'm getting the more confirmed I am becoming that that
3:42
destruction was very limited, but whatever material success the attack on
3:50
the Russian airfields brought for U;kraine, it has been greatly outweighed
3:56
by the extremely negative reaction to this operation which we're starting to
4:01
see develop in the United States. Now, the first thing to say is that one point I
4:07
had not appreciated, it has been pointed out by several people to me in private
4:17
emails, it has also been confirmed both by general Michael Flynn, the former um
4:23
uh chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the man who in the first weeks of Donald Trump's first term was
4:32
his National Security Advisor; and, um, General Blaine Holt, in an interview
4:40
that he has given to American television and which has been commented upon, by the
4:45
way, by many many people; well, the point I
4:50
missed is that the requirement to keep strategic
4:56
bombers visible and parked on runways, airfield
5:03
runways, is a requirement specifically set out in the START treaty which comes
5:11
up for renewal in a few months, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the only
5:19
remaining treaty in terms of arms limitation that continues to remain in
5:26
force between Russia and the United States — and this has caused great dismay
5:34
in Washington because as I said previously, there's been some discussion
5:40
in the United States about seeking Russian agreement to at least extend the
5:46
START treaty, there is now great worry and real concern that
5:53
the Ukrainians taking advantage of the provision in the START treaty which
5:59
required the Russians to keep their bombing, their bombers, um, in plain view
6:06
on the airfields, that that might have scrapped any chance to renew or extend
6:14
the START treaty. The reason for this, the reason for this uh concern, is firstly
6:22
that Russia, as I have pointed out in several programs, is actually a bigger
6:27
nuclear power overall than the United States itself is, it has ongoing programs
6:35
to build ballistic intercontinental ballistic missiles, the uh Yars and the
6:43
Sarmat, which are entering service, it has um
6:48
hypersonic glide vehicle warheads that are being deployed on Russian um
6:55
intercontinental ballistic missiles like the Avangard, it has an active program
7:01
to build nuclearpowered ballistic missile submarines of the Borei class, um
7:08
capable of launching Bulava sea-launched ballistic missiles with the
7:14
range to hit targets [actually anywhere at any time] in the United States, all of these weapons are more
7:20
advanced and sophisticated than the analogous weapons that the United States possesses, and more importantly the
7:27
Russians currently have active programs building all of these relatively modern
7:34
or very modern weapons in quantity, whereas for the moment the United States
7:40
does not, it does have development programs for future weapons but they
7:47
have not yet reached the production stage, they are still firmly in the
7:53
development stage, perhaps even the early development stage. Moreover, and contrary
8:02
to what i said in a recent program, it seems that the Russians do have advanced
8:09
uh development of a new subsonic stealth intercontinental
8:16
uh bomber now. I've received a lot of information about this from a particular source um who i'm not going to discuss
8:23
but this is somebody who is extremely well informed about Russian military
8:30
developments, whenever he's provided me with information of this kind it has invariably turned out to be true. It
8:37
seems that this bomber has now entered field-testing, um, it is an extremely
8:43
secret program which is why we do not know very much about it in the west in
8:49
open sources though there is no doubt at all. I have no doubt at all that the U.S.
8:54
intelligence community is aware of it, and it seems that this bomber, this
9:00
stealth bomber, is scheduled for full entry
9:05
into production in 2027, so the Russians are in a much
9:12
better position to take advantage of any nonrenewal of the START treaty than the
9:20
United States currently is. Of course, over time the United States might be
9:28
able to redress the balance that was what used to, sometimes, happen
9:35
during the cold war, but now of course there is another major
9:40
third party actor on the stage and that is China, which is also busy building its
9:49
strategic nuclear arsenal. It is building more and more longrange missiles, it is
9:55
starting to deploy, um, ballistic missile submarines in quantity with sea-launched
10:03
ballistic missiles supposedly. They're not as advanced as those of the United
10:09
States or of Russia, but there is concern apparently in the United States, that the
10:15
Chinese are increasingly able to access
10:20
Russian submarine technology, one area where the Russians are in advance of the
10:26
Chinese; and besides, I have no doubt that the Chinese have development programs of
10:32
their own. The Chinese also have a stealth bomber, um, under development, and
10:41
apparently about to enter production, and this program is better known and
10:47
understood globally; and, apparently, um, it is further advanced than the analogous
10:56
Russian program is now. The key point is that for the moment the United States is
11:04
able to operate in a situation where Russia
11:12
observes limits on development of its own strategic arsenal, allowing those
11:18
American programs that i was talking about to proceed enabling the United
11:23
States, if and when the START treaty lapses, to bring in production of these
11:31
new systems, but China is not similarly bound, there is no treaty between the
11:39
United States and China limiting development of Chinese nuclear weapons.
11:46
Now, if the START treaty collapses at the end of this year, then the United
11:54
sSates could find itself in an arms race against both Russia and China
12:02
simultaneously, at a time when both of these countries are further are further
12:08
advanced in their development programs, than the, than is the United States
12:13
itself, so it seems that the Americans are extremely unhappy about
12:20
this attack that happened on the Russian air bases, because they're alarmed at the
12:27
implications for the START treaty. They're also alarmed by the fact that
12:33
the Russians, as I have discussed in several programs now, both on this
12:38
channel and on The Duran, appear to believe that the United States is deeply
12:43
implicated in these attacks; in other words, that the United States violated in
12:49
spirit if not in letter, the START treaty by
12:55
facilitating an attack on Russia's strategic bomber force,
13:00
um, um, taking advantage of the provisions
13:05
of the START treaty, which the United States had itself negotiated with ...
13:12
Russia; so, there is growing alarm and anger in the United
13:20
States, as the full implications of this are coming to be understood, I think it
13:26
is becoming increasingly clear that some top officials in the Pentagon at least
13:33
were not aware that the Ukrainians were planning this operation, and of course
13:39
Donald Trump, regardless of what he knew or didn't know, is now going out of his
13:45
way to insist that he was not aware of this Ukrainian operation either. Now, the
13:52
problem is that the Russian suspicion that the Americans at least had some
13:57
knowledge of this operation is almost certainly true, the Ukrainians have said
14:02
that it was being planned for 18 months, um, the United States has a massive
14:09
presence in Kiev, it has its officials in every branch of Ukraine's sprawling
14:17
intelligence apparatus; it is inconceivable to me that the Ukrainians could be planning an operation of this
14:24
kind without somebody in the United States knowing about it and approving it,
14:29
but there is a further factor to take into account, which is that an attack of
14:35
this kind almost certainly does depend on at least some degree of satellite
14:41
intelligence up-to-date satellite intelligence being provided to Ukraine
14:48
to enable the Ukrainians to maneuver their um their containers, the containers
14:53
with the drones, that carried out the attack, to the correct positions around
14:59
the correct airfields. Now, the problem with that is that
15:07
despite various claims it is extremely unlikely indeed that other NATO
15:14
countries possess the degree of satellite coverage to enable the
15:19
Ukrainians to do that, other than the United States itself. It could be that
15:27
the United States has been providing information to some of its NATO allies,
15:34
Britain for example, about the positioning of Russian bombers and the
15:42
British have in turn been providing that information to Ukraine. If that is the
15:49
case, it would not surprise me at all during a brief period when Donald
15:55
Trump interrupted intelligence sharing between the United States and
16:02
Ukraine. I remember that there were discussions in the British media about
16:08
doing that very thing, in effect laundering intelligence provided to
16:15
Britain by the United States and then supplying it to Ukraine so that it would
16:20
not seem as if it was the United States itself that was directly supplying that
16:27
intelligence. The russians of course are not going to be fooled by any of
16:33
that. The americans probably would not be fooled by any of that either. Now, here I
16:41
want to make clear that far from everybody in the United States is unhappy or upset by this Ukrainian
16:50
operation. There are, Ukraine still has many supporters in Washington in the
16:55
intelligence community, in the Pentagon, in the State Department, in other
17:00
sections of the permanent bureaucracy, and no doubt amongst the officials of
17:06
the administration itself. But enough people in washington are
17:14
concerned and angry about what happened, to cause at least a temporary shift
17:23
in the mood in washington, one that has
17:28
been, that has gone against Ukraine, and we see this reflected in the various
17:36
comments of president Trump himself, and of his officials. If we come back to
17:42
Trump, he has spoken about how the bone crushing sanctions that were
17:51
proposed by, um, Lindsey Graham, um, are too
17:56
tough, he's also made comments about the fact that he considers that the
18:03
Ukrainian attack on the air bases, the Russian air bases, um, would enable the Russians to carry
18:11
out their own strikes, justified the Russians in carrying their own retaliatory strikes against
18:19
Ukraine, something which Trump said he was extremely unhappy about, which is
18:25
close to Trump saying that the
18:32
Ukrainians are responsible for any future strikes that the Russians make
18:38
against them, that the Ukrainians have brought these strikes upon
18:45
themselves, a very significant change in rhetoric including from Donald Trump
18:52
himself, just saying, but perhaps the most interesting sign indicator that things
19:00
are changing is that for the first time according to the Wall Street Journal,
19:06
there are now um comments apparently there's now some element of push back by
19:13
the administration against Lindsey Graham and some attempt to try to
19:18
get lindsey graham himself and the republican senators in the senate to
19:26
pull back from the sanctions bill that they have been discussing and thinking
19:33
about, according to the Wall Street Journal, um, members of the White House,
19:39
officials of the white house have been in what is called informal contact with
19:44
Lindsey Graham. I wonder what the word “informal" contact means by the way. I mean
19:49
what does it mean exactly. I mean are they uh speaking to him on the telephone
19:55
or are they sending him emails as opposed to meeting him, or is it um that
20:01
he's not meeting Donald Trump himself? Anyway, I'm not going to worry
20:06
about that, but anyway it seems that they are in touch with Lindsey Graham and they're telling him that, look this
20:13
really isn't a good idea. The time has come for you to actually water down your sanctions, they're suggesting apparently
20:20
that instead of the sanctions being made mandatory on the President if um the um
20:29
legislation is enacted, they should be made optional, that the President can
20:36
impose 500% tariffs on countries like China and India if
20:44
they, if they decide to go on importing Russian energy
20:50
products as opposed to the
20:56
sanctions being automatically in effect whether the President wants them
21:04
to come into effect or not, and apparently these people who are
21:12
informally talking to Lindsey gGaham are saying something that by the way Alex
21:18
Christoforou and i have been talking about in a recent program which we did
21:23
on The Duran, which is that it is the President of the United States who makes foreign policy and who makes foreign
21:29
policy decisions, and it really isn't proper or appropriate for congress to
21:36
tie down his hands by passing a sanctions bill like the one that Lindsey Graham is
21:42
proposing, which will force sanctions to be
21:50
imposed — in practice, [599%] tariffs to be imposed against China and India
21:58
regardless of whether the President supports that or not. For the record, I
22:04
think this point is absolutely valid, I think this bonecrushing sanctions bill
22:11
in its existing form. almost certainly does encroach upon the President's
22:19
constitutional prerogatives. I thought the same, by the way, about the cancer
22:24
bill the combating american enemies act or whatever it was called [H.R. 3364, the 2017 Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act] that was
22:29
passed during Donald Trump's first term, which he signed into law, but made clear
22:35
that he objected to. I think that quite plausibly at some point if Lindsey
22:43
Graham's bill is brought into a law in its existing form it and will go
22:50
to the supreme court of the United States, I would not be in the least bit surprised if the Supreme Court were
22:58
to decide that these bills, these acts were actually unconstitutional, because they were
23:04
restricting the President's ability to conduct the foreign policy of the United
23:10
States, just saying, but anyway probably it won't come to that. I suspect that if
23:19
Republican senators start to get wind of the fact that Donald Trump is not happy
23:24
with his sanctions bill, they too will start to turn up at Lindsey Graham's door and will tell him that he's got to
23:31
water down the sanctions, that the sanctions go too far, that uh uh the
23:37
President almost certainly is right, and that of course the President has the
23:42
ability to stop the bill anyway in its tracks, by um getting the Speaker of the
23:50
House, um speaker Johnson, to refuse to put it to the House, which will in effect
23:56
kill the bill, So, I think that they will tell lLndsey Graham to agree to what
24:02
tTump is asking for, in which case we
24:07
will get a bill which does nothing more than what presidents of the United
24:13
States have already been doing. Presidents of the united states have
24:20
been able to impose sanctions on countries by executive order, presidents
24:27
like Donald Trump — well, at least this president Donald Trump — has imposed tariffs on various countries by
24:35
executive order, this will simply be another bill which confirms that he has
24:41
those powers. It will not add anything to the existing powers that the President
24:48
already possesses or claims anyway. That's how it seems to me, the key thing
24:55
is that Donald Trump apparently is capitalized. I don't think
25:01
he's ever been keen on this bill at all but he's capitalizing on the
25:07
alarm that has been caused in the United
25:13
States by this attack on the Russian airfields, in order to
25:19
um probably either kill or neuter this
25:26
Lindsey Graham sanctions bill, which um Donald
25:32
Trump isn't keen on having brought into law now, but but has for some
25:39
unaccountable reason been reluctant to openly oppose now. I say all of this, of
25:47
course the situation in Washington can change from one day to the next, from one
25:53
hour to the next. It could be that something will happen over the next couple of hours which will cause the
26:00
whole situation to change, again, and we might indeed get um Lindsey Grraham's um
26:07
bone crunching sanctions bill through congress, and signed into law by the president, and the 500% tariffs imposed
26:16
on China and India by the way, um and probably Turkey too, um it will be very
26:23
interesting to see what the economic consequences of that will be on the United States itself, just saying, um the
26:33
head of the industrialists union in Russia, Alexander Shokhin who is um the
26:40
head of what is effectively russia's biggest employers organization,
26:47
he's actually come out and made some comments about what might happen if this bill were brought into effect uh and if
26:55
sanctions like that really were imposed and were effective, in other words China
27:03
and India did indeed decide that they would no longer continue to import
27:08
Russian oil and gas, something which i don't for a moment believe, but
27:14
Shokhin appears to think that that in spite of that and regardless of that
27:23
after a short period of volatility the situation in the Russian
27:30
economy would stabilize and that Russia would be able to resume growth and would
27:36
achieve 2% growth within the next year or so and then start to see its growth
27:43
increase thereafter beyond that, just saying, and that does appear to be the
27:49
mood in Moscow join had a lot more to say incidentally he was making his
27:55
comments in the eve on the eve of an interest rate decision in Moscow which
28:00
I'm going to come to shortly in this program um and i will return to him later in this program but anyway it is
28:08
possible that despite these latest moves being made by the White House to as i
28:14
said either kill or neuter Lindsey Graham's bill that it might still come into law
28:21
in its existing form um it might be that as I said the Russians do something that
28:27
changes the entire situation um in the in Washington again who knows
28:35
but that at least for the moment does appear to be the decision the situation
28:41
it seems as I said that the America that the Americans or at least some people in
28:47
the United States some of the more important people in the United States
28:52
have indeed been angered by this decision that the Ukrainians took in
29:00
launching these attacks on the Russian airfields. Now, here, I ought to say
29:07
something about the Ukrainian reaction to all these pressures and alarms and concerns,
29:17
firstly the Ukrainians continue to insist that so long as the war against them continues they will strike the
29:23
Russian military anywhere and anywhere that they can, they don't care about
29:30
START treaties about the relationship between the United States and Russia,
29:35
about the um nuclear balance, these
29:41
things are of no interest to them, well
29:47
up to a certain point you can understand that, but the fact that the Ukrainians
29:53
are making comments like this ought to again underline for policy makers in the
30:03
United States what an impossible ally or proxy the United
30:11
States has adopted in the form of Ukraine
30:16
Ukraine incessantly demands unending flows of American
30:23
weapons, unending flows of American money,
30:28
it demands more and more sanctions on Russia from the United States, it
30:34
supports tariffs imposed by the United States on countries like China which
30:41
trade with Russia. It never in any way reduces its demands on the United
30:50
States but it pays no heed at all to
30:56
rush to America's to the United States's greater
31:02
geostrategic interests or security concerns. Now, I have spoken about this
31:08
many many times but it has always seemed to me that this is an incredibly
31:15
unbalanced relationship one in which the tail clearly wags the dog. …
31:22
—
On June 8th, Christoforou interviewed Mercouris regarding the U.S-China relationship:
https://theduran.com/us-china-talks-risk-spiral-into-conflict/
“US-China talks risk spiral into conflict”
—
On June 7th, “Simplicius76” posted this report at x, a strong indication that Ukraine is now near to being defeated by Russia (He misspells Boiko as “Boyko”):
https://x.com/simpatico771/status/1931410876948414507
SIMPLICIUS Ѱ
@simpatico771
A military catastrophe is coming: More than 90,000 since the beginning of the year - a Ukrainian Armed Forces soldier on the scale of desertion in the troops
Kiev journalist Boyko, who serves in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, reports the shocking scale of flight from the army.
In the first 5 months of 2025, 90,590 criminal cases were registered on the facts of escape from military units:
January – 18,145,
February – 17,809,
March – 16,349,
April – 18,331,
May – 19,956.
A total of 213,722 cases of desertion have been registered since the beginning of the Second World War.
Boyko notes that these data reflect only those cases for which criminal proceedings have been initiated; the real situation is much worse .
According to him, deserters are not actually sought out; they do not return to service.
"The reason for the military catastrophe approaching Ukraine is obvious: the demonstrative evasion of mobilization by court fabulists like Sternenko, Leshchenko or Bigus, mass shabuning - when tens of thousands of shabunins, vakarchuks, kipianis and other leaders are fictitiously listed in the troops and the lack of law and order in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military formations, caused by the liquidation of the military prosecutor's office in 2019," he writes.
Boyko also notes that in reality there are [only] from 30 to 50 thousand Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers on the LBS [the entire thousand kilometer line of contact, or front line] from the Ukrainian side.
"The consequences of this situation are not difficult to predict," he concluded.
RVvoenkor
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2:00 PM · Jun 7, 2025
27.5K Views
[He then posts there the complete report by Boiko, which is very informative but Simplicius provides it in a photograph, not in any any letter-by-letter form, but anyway, it is readable at his x post.]
—
On June 8th, Simplicius posted his typical lengthy article, and it contained and contextualized that x report, “Russia Strikes Back as Ukraine Bets House on Asymmetric 'Terror' War”.
I shall close here by stating my difference of opinion from Mercouris (and perhaps also from Putin on this matter): Whereas he sees Trump as a decent person who sincerely seeks world peace, I do not. I instead view Trump’s foreign policies as being devoted, just like all post-FDR U.S. Presidents other than JFK have been, to world conquest, an imposed-by-the-U.S.-Government global dictatorship, a forced ‘peace’, but differing from those predecessors only tactically from that strategic objective of world conquest. This is a profound difference of opinion, and it means that I see the U.S. Government as being far more dangerous (and more plain evil) than he does. Because I do, I also blame for the ongoing Holocaust against Gazans not ONLY Israel’s Government but also the Government that donates the weapons and satellite guidance to do it, America’s Government. Furthermore, I also notice that whereas the U.S. public want federal budget-INCREASES for all federal Departments except for Defense and for Homeland Security, Trump has requested from Congress federal budget DECREASES for all federal Departments except for Defense and for Homeland Security (both of which he wants to increase). That reality is consistent with my view that Trump is a neoconservative like virtually all post-FDR Presidents have been, but NOT consistent with Mercouris’s view of Trump (as being well-intentioned). Trump has always surrounded himself almost 100% by neocons.
Biden said “I am running the world,” but Trump said “I run the country and the world.” The statement was aspirational for both of them. But ‘merely’ the aspiration proves how deadly dangerous this Government really IS. George W. Bush was saying the same thing when he said “Either you're with us, or you're against us.” President Obama addressed America’s future military leaders, at West Point, on 28 May 2014, by telling them:
“The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. … It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.”
He was saying that every OTHER nation is “dispensable.” He was telling the military that America’s economic competition, against the BRICS nations, is a key matter for America’s military, and not only for America’s private corporations; that U.S. taxpayers fund America’s military at least partially in order to impose the wills and extend the wealth of the stockholders in America’s corporations abroad; and that the countries against which America is in economic competition are “dispensable” but America “is and remains the one indispensable nation.” This, supposedly, also authorizes America’s weapons and troops to fight against countries whose “governments seek a greater say in global forums.” In other words: Stop the growing economies from growing faster than America’s. There is another name for the American Government’s supremacist ideology. That term is “fascism.” Mercouris and others of even the very best of international-affairs commentators, do not see the post-FDR U.S. Government this way. But I do.
Trump is no better than the man who started the war in Ukraine — Obama — or than the man who came between Trump’s two terms, Biden, or than the man who preceded Obama, Bush. That’s how bad — how consistently horrible, in fact — the U.S. Government now is. Only a revolutionariy solution to this problem would have any posibility of succeeding. And if nothing will succeed, there will be a world-destroying WW3. The stakes here are everything.
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
