The Bonkers Putin to Pentagon Pipeline
Programming note: Please join and me today for the newest episode of Pax Americana. We’ll be breaking down a lot of new developments in the Trump-Putin relationship. Catch us on Substack Live at 11 AM.
In Tuesday’s newsletter, I questioned why Minnesota-born, Tennessee-dwelling Pete Hegseth, our current Secretary of Defense, is using Russian phraseology like “near abroad” to describe places like Greenland, the Panama Canal and Cape Horn.
Hegseth decided to use the curious term “near abroad” in a secret Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance memo that was distributed to officials in the Pentagon. Needless to say, Americans do not use the same terminology to refer to geographic areas in the Western Hemisphere as the Russians do when talking about the former Soviet Republics that Vladimir Putin believes must be in the Kremlin’s sphere of influence. Or, at least, they never have, until Hegseth started running the Pentagon.
Why?
The likely reason is even more chilling than you might have imagined.
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