We know what’s coming and we are prepared.
🇺🇸🇨🇳🇮🇱 What will the surge of US forces to the Middle East cost the military?
The day the Middle East almost erupted into a full regional war this summer, Lloyd Austin was touring an Asian shipyard.
Just before the defense secretary visited Subic Bay, Philippines, the former site of a massive U.S. Navy base, Israel killed the political leader of Hamas, who was visiting Iran.
Austin’s July visit was meant to show his focus on Asia, the region America says is its top priority. Instead, he ended the trip distracted by the Middle East, spending hours containing the crisis on a flight back to Washington.
Since Oct. 7, when Hamas’ attack on Israel provoked all-out war in Gaza, the Pentagon has been on call. When the region has approached a wider war, the Defense Department surged forces there to calm it down. But after a year, some in Congress and the Pentagon are growing concerned about how to sustain that pace, and what it will cost the military in the long term.
Call it the U.S. Central Command squeeze. The Pentagon insists its surge has helped stop the Middle East from falling into chaos. But the longer the region borders on conflict, the more the U.S. tests its endurance for crises later on, most notably, a future conflict with China.
The pressure on the military increased even further this week. After their most intense attacks in almost 20 years, Israel and the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah are close to a larger war. On Monday, Austin yet again ordered more troops to the region, joining 40,000 other American personnel there, 6,000 more than normal. Another aircraft carrier may soon follow.
“We’re caught in this kind of never-ending quagmire of having to divert resources, and we’re burning [out] on the back end,” a senior congressional aide said.
Their message was that America’s military wouldn’t exhaust itself anytime soon, but that a year of unplanned deployments and spent missiles come with a cost. Even more, they said, the longer the crisis continues, the more the Pentagon will have to manage tradeoffs between the urgent needs of the Middle East and the rising challenges of the Indo-Pacific.
Pentagon leaders say they calculate the risk in pulling assets from one region to another, and that the choice to move forces away from Asia is a sign that they consider the region stable enough to do so.
“I have relayed messages that it is better to invest in deterrence where there is no overt conflict, rather than intervene in a conflict where there is one already,” the Philippines Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an August interview. He wouldn’t specify who in the U.S. those messages have reached.
That said, the cost of this posture is also becoming clearer.
The first, and perhaps the most important, part of that tally is the military’s ability to meet future needs, known as “readiness” in defense jargon. By sending more forces to the Middle East, the Pentagon is accepting what amounts to a mortgage: higher costs on its forces to avoid an even bigger bill.
Without specifying the impact of these extensions so far, multiple defense officials and congressional aides said the U.S. is already having to manage “tradeoffs” between the needs of the Middle East today and other areas in the future.
This February, the Houthis shot a ballistic missile at the Navy destroyer Gravely in the Red Sea, one of many times the militia group targeted American ships in the waterway.
But this one came close. In fact, the ship used a short-range weapon — rather than the typical missile — to intercept the attack. The Houthis came within a nautical mile of success, according to Navy officials.
This is an example of the other two costs involved in the Pentagon’s response.
The Navy estimates that between Oct. 7 and mid-July, it fired $1.16 billion worth of munitions while on station in the Red Sea.
China is now closing mosques and converting them into barns for raising chickens as a way to fight radicalism. China officially considers Islam a ‘mental illness.’ Do you like this idea?
🇺🇸Join👉 @SGTnewsNetwork
📎 X (Twitter)▪️Truth Social
🇺🇸⛽️ US refiners face historic stress test as global crisis looms
U.S. refineries have operated near maximum capacity for the longest sustained period in over a quarter century, scrambling to capture windfall profits created by the Iran war. But history offers a cautionary tale: “Super refining” runs that push plants too hard can cause major failures.
This has global implications. U.S. refineries’ ability to sustain today’s elevated operating rates for months, or potentially years, could mean the difference between an exceptionally tight global fuel market and a full-blown supply crisis marked by acute shortages, demand destruction and widespread economic pain.
The result of the U.S-Israeli war on Iran has been a collapse in global fuel production. Global refinery throughput in July fell to 81 million barrels per day (bpd), nearly 5 million bpd, or about 6%, below the level at this point last year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The U.S., the world's largest ...
📝 🇸🇪 🚷 Peter Sweden on X: 35.7% of the population in Sweden now has a foreign background.
Only 64.3% of the population has a Swedish background.
Swedish people are already a MINORITY in the third largest city of Malmö.
Here is what the media doesn't tell you about Sweden.
New statistics show something that would have been unheard of in the 90s.
What would you think if I told you that Sweden is changing, it is happening fast.
In fact, Swedish people are now already a minority in Malmö which is the third largest city in the country.
If you had told someone in the 90s that this would be the case, then you might have been labelled a ”far-right conspiracy theorist”.
However, it is happening.
The borders are still wide open in Sweden it seems. Because since 2020, around 600.000 people have gotten residence permit in Sweden. That is over 5% of the population in just a few years.
Some on the left see this as a good thing, with more cultural diversity.
But others on the right think this is going too far....
🇺🇸⛽️ Costco Is Now Rationing Motor Oil Because the Global Shortage Is Getting Real
A Kirkland Signature oil change has nearly doubled in price, but that's not the most concerning change to how Costco's selling lubricants these days.
Not only does 10 quarts of Kirkland Signature full-synthetic now cost $58 when it used to go for as low as $30, but stores are now imposing a two-per-customer, per-week limit.
The obvious culprit is supply—or, rather, a lack thereof. Demand remains strong as ever as global stock has dwindled due to our ongoing Middle East entanglement. As The Auto Wire highlighted in its own story unpacking the factors at hand, motor oil ultimately comes out of the same barrel that also gives us gasoline and diesel, and right now, refineries can earn more money finishing crude into gas compared to what Costco stocks on its shelves. We’re all getting the short end of the stick at the pump as it is, so it’s not difficult to imagine the pressure the motor oil ...
