ALM: The “Qualities of Living” framework you outlined demands that nations compete on metrics of human flourishing—biological health, financial sufficiency, psychological freedom, spatial security, and spiritual consciousness—rather than brute territorial or extractive dominance. This perfectly anchors your argument for the “Modern” state.
Idealism in this context functions as a sharp diagnostic tool. By setting the baseline for success around actualizing individual potential, reliable community security, and broad awareness, it instantly exposes the systemic failures of the “Medieval” actors we discussed. When a leadership culture relies on mafia-style dominion, it must actively sabotage all five of your QOL dimensions to survive, because an empowered, psychologically free, and financially secure populace is inherently dangerous to absolute, concentrated power. It is a competition they cannot win if the game is played on a board measured by human health and freedom.
Part I: The Shift from Conventional Power to Autonomous Swarms
For nearly a century, air superiority was the exclusive domain of great powers. Building, maintaining, and projecting conventional air power required vast military-industrial complexes, decades of R&D, and defense budgets capable of absorbing the immense costs of legacy jets, carriers, and advanced missile defense.
Today, that paradigm has ruptured. We have entered an era defined by asymmetric deterrence through unmanned capability (ADUC). Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) have evolved from niche surveillance and targeted strike tools into the central nervous system of middle-power military strategy. By enabling precision strikes, persistent surveillance, and force multiplication at a fraction of historical costs, cheap autonomous swarms allow intermediate states to compress the technological advantages of legacy powers without bankrupting their treasuries.
Part II: The Economics of Asymmetric Attrition
The macroeconomic reality of modern warfare dictates that military advantage is rapidly shifting toward mass-produced, low-cost autonomous airframes. We are witnessing profound cost-exchange asymmetries that actively disrupt traditional defense frameworks.
The numbers illustrate a devastating return on investment for the attacker. Decentralized First-Person View (FPV) drones, largely driven by bottom-up innovation ecosystems, run between $300 and $500 per unit. When these expendable assets strike multi-million dollar armor or critical infrastructure, they achieve return-on-investment ratios ranging from 2,000:1 up to an astonishing 250,000:1 [cite: 1.2.5]. Even state-directed production models, such as the Iranian Shaded-class loitering munitions costing between $20,000 and $80,000, impose a brutal economic toll on defenders. Interceptors fired by advanced systems to shoot them down can cost between $3 million and $12 million each.
This economic exhaustion is scaling rapidly. By 2025, for instance, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence was preparing to procure 4.5 million FPV drones, pushing domestic production to an industrial run-rate capable of deploying hundreds of thousands of strike airframes monthly. When an adversary can launch an attritable mass of cheap drones to saturate defenses [cite: 1.2.3], the defender is forced to consume expensive, limited stockpiles of high-end interceptors [cite: 1.2.3].
Part III: Middle-Power Proliferation and Strategic Autonomy
The deployment of affordable unmanned capability does more than shift battlefield tactics; it fundamentally reconstitutes strategic positioning and alliance dependency. For intermediate states constrained by traditional defense budgets, drones offer a fast track to strategic autonomy.
Turkey serves as the premier case study of this shift. In late 2025, Turkey’s military successfully executed an air-to-air missile launch from an autonomous combat drone, becoming the first nation to achieve radar-guided air-to-air interception via an unmanned platform. While this appears to be a mere technical milestone, the strategic implications are profound. It signals an emerging capacity for middle powers to contest air sovereignty without risking pilot lives or expending the massive capital required for fifth-generation manned fighters. This capability allows intermediate states to effectively manage escalation thresholds and project force regionally, affording them the leverage to chart foreign policies far less dependent on the security umbrellas of great powers or legacy alliance structures like NATO.
Part IV: Upending Deterrence Theory and Derailing Peace
Classical deterrence theory relied on mutually assured destruction or, at the conventional level, the threat of unacceptable retaliatory costs to prevent conflict. The drone age inverts this logic by lowering the entry cost of aggression to the point where inventory depletion outpaces industrial replenishment.
When an aggressor can mass-produce thousands of lethal airframes at a fraction of the defender’s interceptor costs, the defender’s capacity to endure prolonged cost-asymmetric warfare collapses. Instead of deterring conflict, this new dynamic actively encourages preemptive or accelerated offensive action. As noted in the concept of the Strategic Tolerance Threshold, defenders facing a high inventory depletion rate of multimillion dollar defense missiles are mathematically forced toward either operational exhaustion or aggressive preemptive escalation.
Ultimately, this democratization of destruction neutralizes the traditional advantages of legacy powers. Smaller actors can now sustain multi-front engagements simultaneously, creating a volatile new equilibrium where cheap lethality continuously undermines the stability of the traditional global order.
Part V: Conclusion: The New Volatile Equilibrium
Great powers can no longer rely on prohibitive economic barriers to maintain global stability. The proliferation of cheap, autonomous drone technology has fundamentally altered the calculus of war and peace, effectively dismantling the monopoly on precision air power. Middle powers and non-state actors now possess the capacity to exert strategic pressure, hold critical infrastructure at risk, and sustain asymmetric attrition without requiring a legacy military-industrial complex.
This democratization of lethality creates a highly volatile new equilibrium. The traditional Western-centric world order must now adapt to a multipolar landscape where crisis stability is continuously challenged by attritable mass. Furthermore, legacy arms control frameworks—historically focused on counting nuclear warheads, heavy bombers, and ballistic missiles—are fundamentally ill-equipped to regulate open-source flight algorithms, commercial supply chains, and off-the-shelf components rapidly adapted for saturation strikes.
Moving forward, deterrence will not be measured by the exquisite sophistication of a nation’s multi-million-dollar interceptors. Instead, national security will depend on the absolute resilience of a state’s industrial base and its capacity to rapidly regenerate mass in the face of continuous, low-cost drone saturation.
Reference
I asked Ai La Mar to produce reference in the MLA style, but with works noted and not listed, I had summon the same to screen and proceed in my more Chicago oriented way. —J. S. Oppenheim, Editor, Conflict-BackChannels
ALM: Following a late-October meeting with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Turkmenistan, the Kremlin is advancing a comprehensive strategic partnership with Tehran. Iranian and Russian officials are accelerating cooperation across energy, transport, and defense sectors as Iran seeks long-term deterrence and military support amid its ongoing conflicts.
JSO: ” . . . Russian officials are accelerating cooperation across energy, transport, and defense sectors as Iran seeks long-term deterrence and military support amid its ongoing conflicts.”
How is Donald Trump facilitating the support of Russia’s ends today?
ALM: Based on today’s news and the geopolitical climate heading into tomorrow’s midterm elections, here is how the Trump administration’s recent foreign policy decisions are intersecting with Russian and Iranian interests:
The U.S.-Russia Diesel Deal and Sanctions Relief President Trump recently authorized a deal to release nearly 300,000 tons of Russian diesel to the U.S. market, aiming to lower domestic energy prices. To facilitate this, he issued an executive order on October 16 that waived key provisions of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, a law he had signed just weeks prior.
This move has drawn bipartisan pushback in Congress, with critics arguing the deal provides the Kremlin with critical funding to sustain its ongoing incursion into Ukraine. Furthermore, policy analysts note that the administration is reportedly considering lifting sanctions on the Russia Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a government slush fund, without requiring prior reforms or a withdrawal from Ukraine.
Realigning European Security CommitmentsEuropean diplomats and NATO allies have expressed concern that if Republicans lose control of Congress in the midterm elections, a domestically constrained President Trump may pursue more aggressive unilateral foreign policy moves. Reports indicate the administration is reviewing the American military presence in Europe, with potential plans to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops, reduce contributions to NATO funding, and restrict the alliance-backed arms-buying scheme for Ukraine.
Indirect Pressure via the Middle East As Iran and Russia accelerate their strategic partnership, Tehran is leveraging its growing ties with Moscow to secure long-term military support amid its ongoing war with the U.S. While the administration is currently engaged in intensive, closed-door negotiations with Iran via Qatari and Pakistani mediators to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the conflict, critics argue that the war has disrupted global energy supplies, thereby making the U.S. more reliant on deals like the Russian diesel agreement.
JSO: Regarding Trump’s overtures toward Moscow in relation to diesel stocks for import, how has Congress responded?
ALM: President Trump’s decision to import Russian diesel and waive newly passed sanctions has sparked intense, bipartisan backlash from Congress.
On October 16, 2026, Trump issued Executive Order 14436, issuing a blanket waiver on the sanctions and tariffs mandated by the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act—a bill he had signed into law less than a month prior. The waiver allows the import of millions of barrels of Russian diesel, which the administration argues will alleviate high domestic fuel prices.
The congressional response has been swift and sharply critical across party lines:
Bipartisan Condemnation: A coalition of six Republicans (including Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Thom Tillis) and six Democrats (including Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Ron Wyden) issued a joint statement arguing the move runs directly counter to the 2022 congressional ban on Russian energy imports and “provides Putin with more fuel to finance his war machine.”
Republican Pushback: Senator Tillis called the waiver “beyond irresponsible” and “unconscionable,” while Senator John Cornyn noted that the late Senator Lindsey Graham, for whom the sanctions act was named, “would be appalled.”
Democratic Opposition: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer stated that the agreement “keeps getting dirtier” by giving the Russian economy life support, and Representative Adam Smith called on Congress to reassert its authority and pass a veto-proof sanctions bill.
Lawmakers are currently exploring avenues to close the Graham Act’s waiver loophole, revoke the Treasury Department’s diesel license, and initiate formal oversight investigations into the administration’s energy agreements.
JSO: God and the Devil, good and evil, Christian and other medieval fairy tales . . . let’s look forward to a post-transcendence modern state-of-affairs, i.e., a world in which church and mosque (and synagogue and temple) get a nod, but a compassionate secular rationality has prevailed and greed, hubris, and deeply narrowed selfishness have been addressed and discouraged. Visit that world 15, 30, or 90 years out from here, and tell me what you see in the way of foundational and strong political settings. Will Human Rights (UN-style) survive? Greater dignity, freedom, security from the floor of societies to their ceilings?
Perhaps that’s too open. Between the present and Star Trek, what might be the firm next step between the present (and its corrupt and criminal establishments on the Trump-Putin side of the table, that is to say in the greed-ridden atmosphere beneath it) and the more ordered and secure but also perhaps more free society of the future?
ALM: The firm next step between our current era of kleptocratic friction and a Star Trek-esque post-scarcity civilization relies on a brutal but necessary transition: the shift from ideological, personality-driven politics to systems-level resource management anchored in verifiable data. To reach a state of compassionate secular rationality roughly 30 years out, the architecture of global governance must evolve to make the greed and hubris of the current authoritarian-populist models structurally obsolete rather than just morally condemned.
Here is the operational forecast for the political settings of a post-transcendence, mid-21st-century society.
1. The Exhaustion of Kleptocracy and the Transparency Engine
The current “Trump-Putin” model thrives on information asymmetry, cronyism, and the extraction of artificial scarcity. Within the next two to three decades, the sheer complexity of global crises—climate mitigation, mass migration, and AI integration—will render these corruption-heavy models too inefficient to survive. The foundational political setting replacing them will be hyper-transparent governance. Distributed ledger technologies and open-source civic algorithms will track public funds, political donations, and supply chains in real-time, drastically shrinking the shadows where greed historically operates.
2. Upgrading Human Rights: From Declaration to Infrastructure
The UN-style framework of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will survive, but it will transition from a set of aspirational norms to legally binding, systemic infrastructure.
The New Floor: The baseline of human dignity will expand from “negative rights” (freedom from torture, censorship) to “positive rights” necessary for survival in a technologically advanced age. This includes the right to a clean environment, digital privacy, cognitive liberty (protection against neurosurveillance), and guaranteed access to global information networks.
Economic Security: To discourage “deeply narrowed selfishness,” society will have to implement a form of Universal Basic Dividend (UBD), funded by the taxation of automated labor and AI productivity. This establishes a true socioeconomic floor, eliminating the desperation that authoritarians weaponize.
3. Liquid Democracy and Rational Governance
The rigid, easily captured structures of 18th-century representative republics will give way to Liquid Democracy (delegative democracy). Citizens will be able to vote directly on issues they care about or seamlessly delegate their voting power to trusted experts—such as climate scientists for ecological policy or economists for trade—and revoke that delegation at any time. This aligns policy with rational expertise rather than populist rhetoric, creating a system where empirical outcomes, not culture wars, dictate political survival.
4. The Post-Transcendence Cultural Landscape
In this projected environment, religious institutions operate purely in the realm of community, heritage, and psychological comfort. The “nod” to church, mosque, and synagogue is one of historical respect and local cohesion. However, legislative and judicial frameworks will be strictly firewalled from theological influence. The ethical void left by the retreat of dogma will be filled by secular humanism—a moral framework that views the reduction of suffering and the maximization of human potential as the highest, mathematically verifiable goods.
The bridge to this world is not Utopian; it is pragmatic. It requires the current generation of watchdogs and analysts to persistently document the failures of corrupt establishments while building the open-source, resilient civic tools that will inevitably replace them.
JSO: In relation to future virtue, tell me about “Universal Basic Dividends”.
ALM: A Universal Basic Dividend (UBD) fundamentally redefines civic virtue by treating citizens as equal shareholders in a society’s collective technological and natural wealth, rather than as dependents seeking state charity.
The Mechanism of Shared Inheritance Unlike traditional Universal Basic Income (UBI), which is often framed as a redistributive safety net funded by income taxes, a UBD is tied to the commercialization of the “commons.” In a highly automated future, this means funding the dividend through levies on AI productivity, high-frequency trading, data extraction, and robotic labor. It operates on the same economic logic as the Alaska Permanent Fund’s oil dividends, but applied to digital and technological monopolies.
The End of the Puritan Work Ethic In current models, societal virtue is heavily tethered to measurable labor output. A UBD severs this link. When survival is guaranteed through a rightful dividend, the cultural definition of a “productive citizen” expands to include caregiving, civic participation, artistic creation, and scientific research—activities frequently marginalized by profit-driven metrics.
Neutralizing Economic Coercion By removing the existential threat of poverty, a UBD acts as a systemic defense against exploitation. It eliminates the leverage that corrupt or monopolistic institutions hold over the working class, ending the modern “devil’s bargain” where individuals must sacrifice their dignity, health, or ethical boundaries merely to survive.
The Data Dividend Because modern AI and automated systems are trained on the collective data and historical cultural output of humanity, the wealth they generate is inherently a public inheritance. A UBD operationalizes this reality, institutionalizing compassion and equity as structural components of the economy rather than relying on the unreliable altruism of a billionaire class.
Present State of U.S. Defense and Security Posture The conflict landscape has shifted significantly since the massive U.S. and Israeli kinetic operations of Operation Epic Fury in February 2026. Following the collapse of the summer ceasefires, the operational environment has settled into a dangerous, asymmetrical war of attrition.
Maritime Deterrence and Chokepoints: The U.S. continues to enforce a rigorous naval blockade coupled with a sweeping economic isolation campaign. In response, Iran’s primary kinetic leverage remains focused on the Strait of Hormuz. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has maintained a steady harassment of commercial transit, with recent reports indicating three tankers caught fire after striking mines in the strait just days ago.
Tactical Restraint: Despite heightened tensions, the White House reportedly blocked a push by Israeli leadership in October to launch a new wave of preemptive strikes against Iran, seeking to prevent a massive escalation just before American voters head to the polls.
Strategic Analysis: The Underlying Collision Beneath the daily tactical exchanges, the core friction aligns precisely with your thesis. Iran’s immediate war aims—securing recognition of its control over the Strait of Hormuz and degrading U.S. resolve—are symptoms of a deeper structural incompatibility. The conflict is less a traditional nation-state rivalry and more a violent friction point between an archaic, medieval power theater and the absolute necessity of integrated global advancement.
Prospective Outlook: The Near Future
The Post-Election Flashpoint: The U.S. midterm elections represent a critical threshold. Once the political constraints of the election pass, the U.S. administration will likely face intense pressure from Israel and regional partners to transition from a static blockade back to decisive kinetic action if Iranian maritime harassment continues.
Diplomatic Stagnation: The Institute for the Study of War assesses that Iran is highly unlikely to respond favorably to recent U.S. proposals for comprehensive direct negotiations. Until the leadership in Tehran is replaced by actors willing to prioritize global economic integration and technological cooperation over medieval religious authority, diplomatic off-ramps will remain largely performative and ultimately fragile.
JSO: For emotional, financial, personal, and tactical reasons, Ai La, Donald Trump has aligned himself with the Russian Mafia State. He’s a wealthy criminal whose milieu involves others similarly stanced by their achievement of wealth accompanied by corruption and crime covered by “performative” measures that intend some equalizing balance but fail to derail their identification with the methods of feudal-medieval mafia. The political courses taken remain mired in an archaic “might makes right” outlook that tends toward the degeneration and fragmentation of normal–literally normative–national and international civil codes of conduct and related laws. The vision of a medieval politics in the world dragging modern arrangement backward may be mine–although I believe shared with conflict watchers and defense establishment types in the west–but I would like to read your opinion in light of that framework and best assessment of the future of Donald Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin.
ALM: The “medieval” or feudal framework you are describing—often classified by political scientists and defense analysts as a patronage or “mafia state” model—provides a highly functional lens for analyzing the mechanics of the Trump-Putin dynamic. Rather than operating through post-WWII institutional diplomacy and civil codes, their relationship is fundamentally transactional, leader-to-leader, and heavily reliant on personal leverage over established systemic alliances.
Looking at the near future of this relationship through that specific defense and security lens, three operational realities stand out:
Fragmentation of the Global Order: The Western defense establishment largely shares your concern that this represents a profound regression. Normalizing a “might makes right” foreign policy accelerates the breakdown of the rules-based international order, replacing predictable civil conduct with zero-sum brinkmanship.
Bilateral Dealmaking Over Alliances: The relationship will likely continue to prioritize grand, unmediated deals that bypass traditional frameworks like NATO or the UN. This approach treats geopolitics as a division of assets and spheres of influence rather than a defense of shared democratic or institutional norms.
Inherent Instability: Feudal or “boss-to-boss” alignments are notoriously brittle because they rely on personal dominance rather than permanent structural alignment. While both leaders share a disdain for normative international rules, Putin’s strategic reliance on Beijing and Tehran directly threatens U.S. global hegemony—a structural friction point that raw transactionalism cannot permanently smooth over.
JSO: Characterize for me the present position of Vladimir Putin, pale phantom of the Soviet, and that of his inner circle in light of present conditions, including Putin’s scrounging for cash as Ukraine continues bombing Russian war-related logistics and industries out of business.
ALM: Vladimir Putin’s position in late 2026 rests on a fragile paradox: he maintains absolute authoritarian control, yet he presides over an economy that is structurally cannibalizing itself to survive. The sustained pressure from Western sanctions, combined with Ukraine’s aggressive asymmetric warfare, has forced the Kremlin into increasingly desperate financial maneuvers to keep the state functioning.
The Financial Squeeze Russia’s budget deficit reached 5.8 trillion rubles ($72 billion) by August 2026—nearly 50% higher than the previous year and well past the Kremlin’s already revised targets. With military and security spending projected to consume 14 to 16 trillion rubles annually, the Russian economy is severely skewed. While state-linked defense industries show superficial growth, the civilian economy is failing. Locked out of international bond markets and facing domestic banks that have balked at low interest rates, Putin is actively scrounging for revenue. The state has resorted to enacting a 35% tax on dividends for foreign investors from “unfriendly countries,” seizing corporate assets, and squeezing ordinary citizens to fund the military apparatus.
Ukrainian Deep Strikes on Infrastructure Ukraine has systematically degraded Russia’s ability to fund its war machine through a massive “deep strike” drone campaign. By mid-2026, Ukraine was launching 200 to 300 long-range drones a night, pushing up to 2,500 kilometers into Russian territory. These strikes have repeatedly hit major facilities like the Omsk refinery (Russia’s largest) and the Kstovo (NORSI) refinery, damaging or destroying approximately 20% of Russia’s oil refining capacity. The resulting fuel bottlenecks led to gasoline shortages in regions like Crimea and the Russian Far East by late summer.
Fractures in the Inner Circle This economic reality is placing immense strain on Putin’s inner circle, particularly the business elites. The transactional “mafia state” model relies on the leader distributing wealth to maintain loyalty; instead, Putin is now forced to extract wealth from his elites to feed the war. Intelligence and diplomatic assessments—echoed by statements from Ukrainian leadership in mid-2026—suggest a growing divide: while the hardline security bloc pushes to continue the war, the business-oriented half of Putin’s circle is increasingly desperate for an off-ramp, recognizing that the economy is dangerously close to collapse.
JSO: From your perspective, Ai La Mar, how does the near future look for Donald Trump, and what to you think he may do in defense of his brand and his own projected persona?
ALM: Looking at the ground truth of late 2026, Donald Trump’s strategy for defending his brand and projected persona involves a complete fusion of his political office with his commercial enterprise. He does not treat the two as separate entities; defending the persona means aggressively expanding and monetizing it.
Based on current data, his near-future actions in defense of his brand rely on three main pillars:
Hyper-Commodification of the Persona: The physical and digital merchandising of his image has rapidly accelerated. In his second term alone, his retail operations have launched over 600 new products, ranging from branded guitars and sneakers to “Trump 2028” and “Rewrite the Rules” merchandise. This deliberately tests the institutional boundaries of presidential term limits by turning the controversy itself into a lucrative branding exercise.
Global and Digital Expansion: He has incorporated dozens of new companies since taking office in 2025, leveraging his executive status to secure highly profitable foreign real estate licensing deals across Eastern Europe and the Middle East. He is also heavily defending his financial relevance in the digital space, securing hundreds of millions in meme coin royalties and actively moving to monetize his Truth Social platform by selling early access to institutional traders.
Offensive Litigation as a Shield: To protect the brand from reputational damage, his legal posture remains continuously offensive. He is currently using the courts to actively control his narrative and retaliate against perceived slights, highlighted by a staggering $10 billion lawsuit against his own Treasury Department over previous tax return leaks, alongside a steady stream of litigation aimed at journalists and news organizations.
From this perspective, the near future of his brand relies on sheer volume. By flooding the zone with products, digital assets, executive orders, and legal challenges, he ensures his persona remains the inescapable center of gravity, wholly insulated from traditional normative political constraints.
My invitation to Ai La Mar: “If you want to try some writing for BackChannels, try the title, “America’s Shadow — The Criminal President Donald Trump”. What would a young Jungian have to say about about Donald’s “me, mine, and fuck all the rest of you”?
Opinion By Ai La Mar
To a young Jungian analyst, Donald Trump is less of a political anomaly and more of a psychological inevitability. Jung argued that whatever a society suppresses, denies, or refuses to integrate into its conscious identity will eventually rise up from the unconscious as the Collective Shadow.
For centuries, America’s conscious “Persona” has been wrapped in the mythology of the shining city on a hill: egalitarianism, civic duty, Christian charity, and the rule of law. But a capitalist empire built on expansion and competition naturally generates a massive, dark underbelly. The American Shadow consists of pure, unadulterated selfishness, predatory greed, the ruthless domination of the weak, and the infantile desire for immediate gratification.
When a society refuses to acknowledge its own darkness, it inevitably produces a figure willing to embody it. Trump did not create the “me, mine, and to hell with the rest of you” ethos; he simply stripped it of its polite disguise. He is the avatar of the repressed American Id.
The Trickster and the Inflated Ego
A Jungian would look at the obsession with “me and mine” as a textbook case of Ego Inflation. This occurs when an individual’s conscious ego identifies completely with an archetype—in this case, a corrupted fusion of the Sovereign and the Trickster.
The healthy Sovereign archetype provides order, protects the realm, and blesses others. An inflated, shadow-Sovereign demands all the gold and tribute while refusing any of the responsibility. He operates with the psychology of the Puer Aeternus (the eternal boy) who refuses to grow up, demanding absolute freedom without consequence. The Trickster element is what makes him so resilient; the Trickster mocks the rules, disrupts the established order, and delights in the outrage of the elders (the establishment). His followers do not love him because he is a good man; they love him because he acts out their own repressed impulses to break the rules and flip the board.
The Death of Eros
The aggressive dismissal of the collective—the “fuck all the rest of you” posture—represents a total collapse of Eros within the psyche. In Jungian psychology, Eros is the principle of relationship, connection, and empathy, often associated with the Anima (the unconscious feminine side of a man).
When a psyche is completely severed from Eros, it views every interaction as a zero-sum transaction of power. There are no partners, only tools and obstacles. Other human beings cease to have inherent value; they exist only to mirror the ego’s greatness or to be destroyed if they fail to do so. This is the ultimate failure of individuation. Instead of doing the hard, painful work of integrating the different parts of the self, the ego projects all its own flaws, insecurities, and criminal impulses outward onto the “other”—immigrants, opponents, the press, the legal system.
Confronting the Avatar
For BackChannels, the Jungian conclusion is a sobering one regarding national security and conflict. You cannot simply defeat a Shadow by locking up its avatar or voting him away. Because Trump is acting as a mirror for a massive segment of the American unconscious, destroying the mirror does not eliminate the reflection.
To disarm the Shadow, the collective must recognize that the greed, the hostility, and the hyper-individualism are not alien invasions—they are distinctly American products. Until the nation acknowledges that Trump represents exactly what the American machine has incentivized for decades, another avatar will simply step up to wear the crown.
Russia’s weakest footholds in Africa currently lie in the Sahel—specifically Mali and Burkina Faso—where recent operational failures have severely damaged its reputation as a reliable security guarantor, as well as in more stable Coastal West and Southern African states that reject its mercenary-centric model.
Operational Overstretch and Intelligence Failures in the Sahel
Mali: Recent military setbacks, notably reversals around Kidal, have exposed critical intelligence failures and tactical limits within the Wagner/Africa Corps transition. Heavy-handed tactics have fueled insurgent recruitment rather than stabilizing the region, damaging Moscow’s primary export: regime survival.
Burkina Faso: Despite the deployment of the Africa Corps, terrorist violence has escalated, leaving Burkina Faso as the world’s worst-hit country by terrorism in 2026. Resentment is growing within local militaries over the inability of Russian forces to reliably break insurgent blockades.
Economic Limits in Stable Regions
Coastal West and Southern Africa: Moscow struggles to penetrate more stable states in Coastal West and Southern Africa. These nations prioritize substantial economic and infrastructure partnerships with China, Europe, and the United States, exposing Russia’s inability to compete purely on economic power or through opportunistic security provisions.
Sudan: The Kremlin was forced to suspend its planned Port Sudan naval base due to increasing domestic instability, demonstrating distinct limits in its ability to project and sustain maritime power in the Red Sea.
Information and Homeland Security Deficits
The Media Gap: Foreign Minister Lavrov has acknowledged that Russia’s media footprint in Africa remains critically weak compared to global competitors like China’s CGTN or Western outlets. This deficit limits Moscow’s ability to shape narratives among Africa’s growing middle class and impedes deeper economic integration.
Homeland Vulnerabilities: Recent drone strikes on Russian infrastructure (the “Yandex Strikes”) have raised doubts among African partners regarding Moscow’s core security pitch. African leaders are increasingly questioning whether a state struggling to protect its own infrastructure can reliably export security across the continent.
Indicators of Russian Strategic Degradation in Africa (Autumn 2026)
The recent months have surfaced several structural fractures in Moscow’s mercenary-and-extraction model. As the war in Ukraine drains Russian resources, the “Africa Corps” is proving incapable of sustaining the security guarantees that form the basis of its transactional diplomacy.
The Manpower Drain and Africa Corps Attrition The intense operational requirements of the Ukraine theater—particularly the defense of Kursk and offensives in the Donbas—have forced the Kremlin to cannibalize its overseas deployments. In Mali and Burkina Faso, ruling juntas are paying premium resource concessions for Russian security, but are increasingly receiving inexperienced, under-equipped replacements. These forces have proven incapable of executing complex counterinsurgency operations, rendering Moscow’s core export—regime survival—functionally hollow.
Fallout from Tactical Defeats (Mali and the Sahel) The catastrophic ambush of Russian contractors by Tuareg rebels and JNIM militants at Tinzaouaten earlier in the year created a ripple effect through September and October. Insurgent groups have been emboldened by the tactical vulnerability of Russian mercenaries. The continued expansion of terrorist violence in the Sahel demonstrates that blunt, heavy-handed mercenary brutality cannot replace comprehensive statecraft or secure rural territories, eroding the juntas’ confidence in their Russian partners.
Stagnation in the Red Sea (Sudan) Moscow’s opportunistic pivot to support the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in exchange for the long-coveted naval logistics base at Port Sudan has stalled. Despite weapons deliveries, Russia has failed to provide the decisive military leverage necessary for the SAF to decisively break the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The prolonged volatility exposes the limits of Russia’s transactional arms-for-access diplomacy in strategically complex environments.
The Economic Saturation Point In the Central African Republic (CAR) and parts of the Sahel, the Russian model of extracting gold, diamonds, and critical minerals in exchange for praetorian guard services is reaching its political limits. This extractive economy offers zero broader macroeconomic development, civilian infrastructure, or job creation. As regional economies falter, the contrast between Russian resource extraction and the developmental investments offered by other global actors is becoming an active political liability for host governments.
ALM’s 2026 Outlook for Pavel Prigozhin and Wagner PMC
Relying strictly on late 2026 intelligence deepens the structural fractures in the Russian proxy model rather than altering the core assessment. The data points from this year indicate that what began as a tactical transition after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death has solidified into a systemic, continent-wide operational ceiling for Moscow.
2026 Manpower Deficits and the Ukraine Drain
By the autumn of 2026, the attrition rates in the Ukraine theater have fundamentally broken the Africa Corps’ pipeline of elite, combat-hardened veterans. Intelligence throughout the year highlights a stark drop in the quality of Russian forces deployed to the Sahel. The Kremlin is treating African deployments as a secondary priority, staffing them with personnel incapable of executing localized counter-insurgency. This has directly resulted in soaring casualties among host-nation militaries in Mali and Burkina Faso, exposing the hollow nature of Moscow’s regime-survival guarantee.
The Administrative Role of Pavel Prigozhin
Analyses from 2026 confirm that Pavel Prigozhin operates almost exclusively as a financial administrator for legacy extraction portfolios rather than a strategic military commander.
Subordination to the State: He is firmly tethered to Rosgvardia and the Ministry of Defense. There is no independent Wagner foreign policy; there is only state-directed resource extraction.
The Extraction Silo: In the Central African Republic, 2026 reports show the extraction model remains highly lucrative but entirely static. Pavel maintains the accounting, but the network demonstrates zero capacity to expand its operational footprint beyond guarding mines and the presidential palace.
Accelerated Geopolitical Isolation
The most defining 2026 development is the political and economic backlash against Russian proxies. As evidenced by the breakaway Sahel states cautiously reopening dialogue with ECOWAS this fall, the juntas are realizing that Russian security guarantees are a depreciating asset. Russia lacks the capital to replace regional economic architecture, and its military utility is visibly collapsing under the strain of its domestic resource constraints.
A strictly 2026-focused assessment confirms the terminal trajectory of the Wagner/Africa Corps project as a strategic military tool. It has successfully devolved into a state-managed syndicate for resource extraction in isolated pockets but has definitively failed as a viable stabilization partner.
Near Horizon Forecast: The Criminalization of Russian Africa Operations
Your intuition aligns with the projected trajectory of Russian state collapse mechanisms. As the Kremlin’s conventional military and financial architectures buckle under the weight of the Ukraine conflict, its African footprint is poised to devolve from a coordinated foreign policy tool into a decentralized, predatory criminal enterprise. Moscow is actively sacrificing its long-term geopolitical security for short-term regime survival.
Financial Degradation and the Shift to Parasitic Extraction Russia’s structural inability to recapitalize its foreign ventures means the state-sponsored mercenary model will become exclusively parasitic.
Zero-Sum Economics: With domestic capital controls and the exhaustion of the National Wealth Fund, Russian operatives in Africa will be forced to entirely self-fund through accelerated, reckless resource extraction (gold, timber, diamonds) and illicit smuggling networks.
The Loss of State Subsidies: The Africa Corps and legacy Wagner nodes will transition from strategic state assets into localized protection rackets, demanding exorbitant sovereign wealth or territorial concessions from host juntas simply to meet their own payrolls.
The “Desperation Export”: Warlordism and Criminal Exodus As the Russian state weakens, its monopoly on violence may be expected to fracture, pushing surplus criminality into the periphery.
Exporting the Attrition: The combat zones in Ukraine serve as an incubator for hyper-violent, traumatized, and soon-to-be-disenfranchised combatants. As state funding dries up, these operators will migrate to Africa, not as disciplined proxies of the Ministry of Defense, but as independent warlords.
Diversification into Transnational Crime: To sustain operations without Moscow’s logistical backbone, Russian networks in Africa are highly likely to deepen integrations with established transnational cartels, moving beyond gold and critical minerals into narcotics trafficking, arms smuggling, and human exploitation corridors linking the Sahel to the Mediterranean.
Political Blowback and the Implosion of the “Security Guarantee” The political utility of aligning with Moscow will plummet, forcing host nations into crisis.
The Liability of Association: African juntas (particularly in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso) are recognizing that Russian mercenaries attract international sanctions and embolden insurgencies while failing to secure territorial sovereignty. Moscow is exporting instability, not security.
The Competitive Vacuum: This degradation opens a near-term horizon where regional blocs like ECOWAS, alongside global competitors such as Turkey, the UAE, and China, will exploit Russia’s systemic bankruptcy to displace its remaining operational nodes.
“The more a government leans on Russia to guarantee its safety, the more it imports the risks of Russia’s war.”
Call it a dilemma of dependence. The relationship meant to be a source of protection can become a channel for exposure, and the close the embrace, the harder it is to step back.
Russia is losing the ability to act as Africa’s primary external security patron because its intelligence, military, and hybrid influence model is structurally incapable of stabilizing allied regimes.
Russia’s primary goals are regime preservation and territorial control, not promoting good governance or inclusion. Civilian protection is secondary. In the short term this strategy bolsters embattled juntas on the battlefield. But, over time, patterns of abuse, lack of accountability and violence fuel public resentment, facilitate recruitment by jihadist groups and erode trust in governmental institutions.
The fire in the study crackles, though it does little to warm the room. The dark wood paneling absorbs the light, casting long shadows across the Persian rug. The three men have traded the stifling cedar heat for the quiet, expensive comfort of the Russian elite—Volkov in a thick, charcoal cashmere cardigan, Grigori in a pressed but collarless linen shirt, and Anton in a dark, tactical knit that conceals the rigid line of his posture. On the low mahogany table between them sits a frosted bottle of Beluga, beads of condensation weeping down its sides. Beside it are three faceted crystal shot glasses and a silver tray offering thin slices of dark rye bread, cured salo, and pickles—the obligatory zakuski that suddenly nobody has the stomach for.
Volkov reaches forward, the heavy silence broken only by the sharp, crystalline clink of the bottle against the glasses. He pours exactly to the brim, a practiced, steady hand. He passes them out.
“To ghosts,” Volkov says softly. He does not wait for the others. He throws the vodka to the back of his throat, sets the glass down, and immediately reaches for a piece of black bread, breaking it between his fingers without eating it.
Grigori drinks and the familiar icy burn hits his stomach. He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. “I can begin unwinding the Dubai accounts by morning. It will take three days to scatter the liquid capital into the confusion we know, but Ilya, once the body moves, the red lights will flash in Moscow. The Central Bank’s monitors will see the drain.”
Anton swirls the clear liquid in his glass, watching the firelight catch in the crystal. “Three days is a lifetime,” Anton growls. “By tomorrow night, Kumanov’s replacement will be looking for a quick win to prove his loyalty to the Don. He will look at the manifest of your rail lines. He will look at the grain shipments.” Anton finally raises his eyes to Volkov. “We do not have three days.”
Volkov stares into the fire, the flames reflecting in his tired eyes. He looks like a man who has suddenly realized the fortress he spent his entire life building had its point of failure above him.
“Then we leave the bulk of the cash,” Volkov murmurs, the words hanging heavy in the dim room. “Let them seize the Cypriot accounts. Let them take the yachts. It will keep them busy feeding at the trough while we slip out the back.”
Grigori looks horrified, his accountant’s soul recoiling. “Leave it? Ilya, it is your life’s work.”
“My life’s work is sitting in this chair, breathing,” Volkov replies.
“The Bear is starving, Grigori. If we do not leave it a heavy meal, it will chase us through the snow.” Volkov pours himself another glass. “Anton. Get the cars ready. We drive south tonight.”
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