How to confront the U.S. mad dog prowling the globe, according to Michael Brenner.
President Donald Trump in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on May 13, 2025. (White House /Daniel Torok)
Trump’s America is like a rabid dog prowling the globe. It strikes ferociously at whomever gets in its way or encroaches on its deranged mental space or simply is available to satisfy its lusts.
If the Middle East is your neighborhood, you live in dread of the equally depraved, murderous mongrel in Jerusalem.
How can you deal with its menace? Killing it is one theoretical option. That is impossible, though, because of the creature’s abnormal strength; the only instruments up to the job militarily put all parties’ very survival at risk. That strength also precludes capture and confinement.
What that leaves are strategies that aim to induce the monster to destroy itself. That is, its diseased body – the root cause of its demented behavior – might gnaw away at it from within.
In order to accelerate the process, inhabitants of the global commons should put maximum stress on its pathological condition by doing the following: inflicting physical pain in retaliation against every offense.
Rough him up – the way the Taliban did, the way the Iraqis did. Bloody him as the Iranians are doing. Undercut his sense of omnipotence – the way the Chinese did using the leverage of rare earth elements.
Submit him to a barrage of mockery and ridicule. Torment him emotionally via insult and humiliation wherever possible and by any means that can be mustered.
Picador tactics to confuse, to harry, to distract, to disorient. Play on his insecurities and fragile ego. Take surprise initiatives to keep him off-balance.
Be prepared to make sacrifices in defense of national integrity is endangered (the ultimate example being Ayatollah Khamenei‘s supposed choosing de facto suicide so as to inflame Shi’a resistance across the region to the Israeli-American onslaught).
Admittedly, a strategy of confrontation means enduring an inescapable measure of pain and injury yourself. There is no other alternative, though, to avoid being chewed up one at a time by the mad dog.
The approach sketched here also carries a different sort of potential benefit.
It improves the odds, however slim they might be, that the beast’s own immune system would be reset, invigorated enough to generate the anti-bodies that could cure the illness – or, at least, ameliorate the deadly behavioral symptoms.
To Whom It May Concern
Trump lectures European leaders in the Oval Office, August 2025. (White House/Wikimedia Commons)
This outline of a strategy to check the United States’ increasingly audacious coercive efforts to subordinate other states to Washington’s will and control had no specific government in mind. Just, ‘to whom it may concern’.
When we do address the question of who might buckle on the armor and seize the sword, candidates are few and elusive. The nations of Old Europe?
A laughable proposition given their chosen vassal status to Trump’s America. Meek leaders like Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz. Ursula von der Leyen, and Mark Rutte cannot even muster the courage, when in the presence of “Big Daddy,” to shift their gaze from their own shoes to Trump’s shoes.
India? Prime Minister Narendra Modi has succeeding brilliantly in discrediting India’s claim to great power status by hastening to Jerusalem to embrace Netanyahu on the very eve of Israel’s latest aggression on Iran.
He did so with the aim of currying favor with Bibi’s man in the White House and the Zionist claque in Congress with the futile hope that Washington will ease the terms of its economic extortion racket which Modi hasn’t the courage to resist. A putative great power cannot afford such craven, pandering conduct.
Japan? After 80 years of pursuing a reasoned and reasonable low-profile foreign policy, Tokyo under the current leadership is flexing its growing military muscle with the declared purpose of being an auxiliary to the United States in valiant defense of Taiwan/Formosa now pronounced part of Japan’s vital national security zone.
That leaves us China and Russia who, acting in tandem, could take on the United States following a comprehensive strategy of resistance and competition. So, this is for you President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin.
At the moment, that seems unlikely. The key questions are:
- Do they recognize the Leviathan that the United States has become, the threat that it poses to their well-being as well as to a stable international order, and the intractability of its leaders that makes a diplomatically fostered modus vivendi a near impossibility;
- Are they prepared to make the commitment to an open-ended, comprehensive combat that the challenge dictates? Their answers to date are more implicit than explicit, and liable to modification in light of shifting domestic as well as external circumstances. We can only draw inferences from the soft evidence now available.
On question 1: Xi shows signs of having a clearer understanding of what is driving American actions than does Putin. The latter, although a very rational person who is dispassionate in thought and action, nonetheless possesses an evident strong attachment to the goal of working out more or less cordial relationship with the United States – despite the manifest lack of his interlocutors having a matching accommodating attitude and a record of serial duplicity.
On question 2: Neither Russia nor China is ready to pick up the cudgels to do battle with a United States bent on imperial adventure and eliminating both of then as serious rivals – for complex and not identical reasons. Ukraine and Taiwan being the only two places where confrontation impels implacable opposition.
There are twin dangers in Moscow and Beijing’s strategy of restraint and patience.
The rapid pace at which Washinton is extending and escalating its campaign of global domination carries the risk that it will come close to realizing its grandiose ambitions before its potential rivals are in a position to mobilize themselves to prevent that outcome.
Second, the recklessness of America’s unstable leadership, emboldened by the former’ passivity, could lead to an acute crisis wherein the inadvertent stake is national integrity – thereby, raising the spectre of cataclysmic war.
Iran already poses the deeply troubling possibility that an Israel, led by apocalyptic fanatics and facing an end to its viability as a state, could resort to nuclear weapons – and then all bets are off for everyone. Or, they might threaten to do so unless the Americans invade Iran on the ground.
Michael Brenner is professor emeritus of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and a fellow of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS/Johns Hopkins.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
The U.S.’ Achilles heel is its economy, which appears to be weakening by the day. If and when the U.S. dollar loses its status as the world’s reserve currency, the U.S. will lose its ability to bully other countries into submission.
Beware the “US is a rabid dog” analogy, especially if they issue from the tenured imperial academics at the finishing schools of liberal internationalist hegemony.
The US may be crazy, but it is crazy like a fox. It knows what it is doing. All this was mapped out years and decades ago. It may seem tactically incoherent (tactics on the battlefield always shift) and desperate (it is), but in terms of grand strategy things are rolling out to a coherent plan.
The US has wanted war with Iran since 1979, and certainly since 2003, when the Neocons/Cheney administration drew up plans to take down “7 countries in 5 years”. But even before that, Western Hegemony was predicated on control of the gulf states and the flow of petroleum, which is why the US overthrew Mossadegh in 1953. Many of the elements of Brooking’s grand strategy paper, “Pathway to Persia” and the neocon “Clean Break” have already happened.
There is another weakness in the professor’s analogy: he argues that the US is no longer a rational actor, has lost the thread, and is no longer subject to restraint, only punishment, harassment, or ridicule. This, he argues, should be done by others: the “denizens of the global commons” and other powerful nations.
This is wrong and disempowering: if there is any notion of agency left, any pretention of representational government, and any sense of ethical responsibility, the burden of action falls on the citizens of the Empire to rein it in, or at least make efforts to do so. That involves hitting the streets, hitting the phones, hitting the keyboards, talking to representatives, GI’s, and other leaders, and protesting the corporations that are facilitating these deadly imperial wars.
Wow, what a learned response to Prof. Brenner’s educated reflection on allegedly Trump’s America. Actually, Brenner has taken Trump too seriously and has imputed a high level of agency to him personally. If that is valid, then why does a Iran-howling Trump goes limp and whimpers to Nutty’s every command ? It is the Zio-Con OILYgarchs if not also the American deep state that is actually tugging at the leash that is holding Trump. In the wake of the Epstein’s files, Putin doesn’t give him any serious regard, so too doesn’t Xi, and any other leader worth their salt. And in the domestic scene too, the Democrats are having a laugh at his expense, and definitely Melania, even more literally ! Meaningful change in the US can only come through the combined pressures of external forces and internal actors proactively collaborating.
“Trump’s America is like a rabid dog prowling the globe. It strikes ferociously at whomever gets in its way or encroaches on its deranged mental space or simply is available to satisfy its lusts.
If the Middle East is your neighborhood, you live in dread of the equally depraved, murderous mongrel in Jerusalem.
How can you deal with its menace? Killing it is one theoretical option. That is impossible, though, because of the creature’s abnormal strength; the only instruments up to the job militarily put all parties’ very survival at risk. That strength also precludes capture and confinement.”
The Old Norse Gods had the answer: You need to leash it with things that cannot be fought, because they don’t exist:
The legendary wolf Fenrir, which possessed supernatural strength, was bound with a leash spun from:
• The sound of a cat’s footfall
• The beard of a woman
• The roots of a mountain
• The sinews of a bear
• The breath of a fish
• The spittle of a bird
There was one catch: The wolf was smart. It demanded that one of the Gods lay his hand in its mouth for reassurance. The God of just war agreed to do this.
When the wolf found it could not free itself, it bit the God’s hand off. He is, since then, the one-handed God.
The means to deal with the ‘rabid dog’ will be that which he could not foresee, that ‘does not exist’ in his mind, and it will require sacrifice.
Thousands of Iranians have already made the sacrifice.
When will we bring out the magic leash?
It looks to me as if the real Russian and Chinese strategy is to maintain an international bulwark against excessive western expanionism, playing a long game waiting for the US, Isreal + Western vassals to exhaust themselves and deplete their energy, reserves and weapons.
This seems to be happening, firstly in Ukraine, and now in the Middle East.
Iran is in a genuinely existential fight for survival, and clearly won’t be easily defeated, if at all. Israel, already severely weakened, is more and more likely to use a nuclear weapon against Iran – which would ignite a major global conflict, and backlash against the Western powers.
The US’ is virtually powerless to stop it, if it does choose to use one., but will have to deal with the consequences, because many countries around the world will blame the US for failing to contain Israeli aggression. Either way, the US loses.
I suspect we have reached, and passed, the tipping point at which US & Israeli power in the Middle East has been severely weakened and compromised by a) the US’ inability to defend its Arab state ‘allies’, and b) Israel’s visible attacks on those same ‘allies’ [some open, some false flag-type], and their realisation that their supposed ‘friends’ are not friends at all. Those Arab states have already suffered major damage to their infrastructure and economies – all targets because of their ‘alliances’ with the US.
The mad dog will undoubtedly lash out even more, and make even more majopr mistakes as he doubles down on defeat and failure. His megalomania and monstrous ego won’t allow him to back down.
We are all in for a very rough ride in the next few years.
Russia remembers what they call The Great Patriotic War where literally millions of soviet soldiers filled mass graves and everyone else reaped the benefits. While this does not negate the need for Russian resistance it is a cultural blockage that China and Iran did not overcome.
China also lost millions of troops and was denied any benefits until 2001 and which shortly afterwards the USA turned on them.
Each of these nations need people to come forward and create a method overcoming this reticence because at the moment they seem to be just hoping the USA collapses without a solid foe to fight.
Always follow the money / money-printers; Read: THE BANKERS’ MANIFESTO OF 1892 “We [the bankers] must proceed with caution and guard every move made, for the lower order of people are already showing signs of restless commotion. Prudence will therefore show a policy of apparently yielding to the popular will until our plans are so far consummated that we can declare our designs without fear of any organized resistance.
The Farmers Alliance and Knights of Labor organizations in the United States should be carefully watched by our trusted men, and we must take immediate steps to control these organizations in our interest or disrupt them. At the coming Omaha Convention to be held July 4th [1892], our men must attend and direct its movement, or else there will be set on foot such antagonism to our designs as may require force to overcome. This at the present time would be premature. We are not yet ready for such a crisis. Capital must protect itself in every possible manner through combination [conspiracy] and legislation.
The courts must be called to our aid, debts must be collected, bonds and mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible. When through the process of the law, the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and easily governed through the influence of the strong arm of the government applied to a central power of imperial wealth under the control of the leading financiers.
People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. History repeats itself in regular cycles. This truth is well known among our principal men who are engaged in forming an imperialism of the world. While they are doing this, the people must be kept in a state of political antagonism. The question of tariff reform must be urged through the organization known as the Democratic Party, and the question of protection with the reciprocity must be forced to view through the Republican Party.
By thus dividing voters, we can get them to expand their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us, except as teachers to the common herd. Thus, by discrete action, we can secure all that has been so generously planned and successfully accomplished”
Wake up and smell the pigsiht.. Americans have been bred and groomed by the Anglo-British-Zionist empire without their even suspecting simply put; he who prints/ creates the money, controls the people.
Valuable Explanation Quotes / Info: -“The process by which money is created is so simple that the mind is repelled.. The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it.” Money from whence it came John Kenneth Galbraith. Famed economist author and adviser to Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B.Johnson.
Quote-“Banks lend by creating credit. (ledger-entry credit, monetised debt in books) They create the means of payment out of nothing”- Ralph M. Hawtrey, Secretary of the British Treasury Quote-“I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that banks can and do create money…And they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people” Reginald McKenna -Frm Chairman of the Board, Midlands Bank of England
Quote-“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it” -Fred Bastiat, author, economist and political analyst (1800 -1849
There is of course the wise move regarding China and Russia ,never interrupt an opponent that is busy destroying itself .
A HISTORICAL BLUNDER WAS MADE IN 1948.
The unfathomable is not trump’s Psychotic behaviour but how Gulf monarchies bend and kneel down before Lindsey Graham and jared kushner even pay a fortune to do that. Absolute lack of heritage pride
I will rejoin you on the other side.
It was a good run while it lasted
A prescient and deeply disturbing presentation of the dilemma. There are always mad dogs in the geopolitical kennel! For the first time in our troubled history we (and the rest of the living world) are facing 3 potentially terminal dangers, and the informed and thoughtful among the power brokers know it: cascading collapse of environmental services, human economic failures of violent proportion and knee jerk military responses (WMD) to these existential pressures. So far the ‘thoughtful’ have taken only rhetorical action leaving a (very difficult and scary) vacuum to be filled with madness, and the most counterproductive madness at that.
We the people must recognize the reality. The only way to rid the U.S. of its simperial ambitions is to replace both imperial parties with a true Peace Party. All exlanations aside, we must judge by actions, and by actions at this point in time we mean votes.Votes are the only actions both parties consider approval to continue their misguided ways; Words are discarded before they even reach the person elected Those elected to represent us are afraid of a Constitutional Convention. What they should be afraid of is a 2026 election. There are enough Peace people to oust them all. Peace actions should be organizational with the goal of making a vote count for peace. Let our actions be directed to the kind of future we want. That would eliminate the representation we now have. Organization is the answer that where the emphasis must be if we actually want the changes needed to make America great.
Pie in the sky. If voting changed anythling it would be be banned outright.
Ladies & Gentlemen,
No doubt, “the wolf @ the door,” will be howling, “Vote Like Your Life Depends On It!” The wolf will be REpeating, ad nauseam, “This is the most important election we’ll vote in.” EXPECT to have a REpeat, REdo, REplace, REsolution, REtrograde of things,” i.e., Mercury Retrograde.
“When Mercury goes retrograde,” AND, “While it only stays retrograde for about three-four weeks at a time, it seems like we are just getting back to “normal” before we hear that another Mercury Retrograde is approaching,” i.e., Election 2026. Once, again, imo, a “Dead Letter” bin attached to another Uniparty’s big, phkn win.
Imo, if, elections were fair & square; &, Voters, wholeheartedly, had “Taken the Smart Risk,” Ralph Nader would be President; AND, “we” would NOT be, here, @ “Operation, Wait & See.” I, foresee, the occupying powers that be, of the Divided $tates of Corporate America, i.e., Trump-Vance, Inc/Israel., replacing “civil government with military authority,” i.e., Martial Law rock’n The ICEY Kingdom.
Imo, WANTED: a “Ballot” REsolution; or, a Bullet, metaphorically, speaking, i.e., Ballot 2026, For President, Check: (1) “D” for Democrat, (2) “R” for Republican, (3) “F/N” for Fugg ‘Em. Neither! (4) “W” for *“World” Party. Save the Planet NOT Nuke it! (5) “A Plan to Save the Planet,” NOVEMBER 24, 2021 @ hxxps://thetricontinental.org/text-a-plan-to-save-the-planet/. (Director, Vijay Prashad)!!! TricontientalSocial Research Institute aka DEPT of PEACE,
No doubt, there’s cause for alarm, i.e., Mercury Retrograde. Bear in mind, “Mercury represents our mental & communicative life processes. It governs communication in all its forms, 1) whether spoken word or written, 2) whether paper document or internet data transmission. 3) It represents the “REasoning mind, the analytical mind, the ability to perceive relationships & connections between things, & the gathering & sorting of all facts & figures. It oversees trade and commerce, and it represents short journeys of all kinds.”@ hxxps://www.astrologycollective.org/post/what-is-mercury-retrograde
Not for nothin’; but, for The Universe, World Party’s “Message in The Box” @ hxxps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=udCaa-Ju3dk&list=RDudCaa-Ju3dk&start_radio=1&pp=ygUfV29ybGQgcGFydHkgbWVzc2FnZSBpbiBhIGJvdHRsZaAHAQ%3D%3D
TY. “Keep It Lit!”
America versus the Land of Sun Tsu means the following. When the American brawlers decide that the time to start the war has arrived, the Americans will have already lost the war.
Recently, FM Lavrov in Russia (the American media of course focuses only on ‘Putin’, thus this author makes the same mistake), but Lavrov has said in the last couple of days that “Anchorage” has “evaporated.” This of course is not reported in America, where the media (all of it) inflates Trump’s message and ignores others. But, this is key as it points out that the American notion that Putin is somehow infatuated with Trump and thus is fooled by him is nonsense that is still accepted by this American professor who consumes American media.
China has very clearly stated that they see the situation in the world as such that they know that if Iran or Russia falls, they will be next and will have to stand alone against the Monsters of Minab later. American media still reports the nonsense that Russia and China can be separated by the extreme diplomatic skill of the Americans. That Americans have any skill at diplomacy is yet another myth of the American media. And again, consuming American media hampers the analysis of Americans as they tend to base their analysis on the vast sea of American lies.
Of course, any American has the American gangster attitude, reinforced constantly by American media, that if a person is not openly fighting then they must be some sort of cowardly wimp who is therefore not important. They will never understand the nation of Chess players in Russia, nor the land of Sun Tsu. Americans see hesitation as weakness, while both Chess players and Go players see deeper strategies than the typical American barroom brawler.
There are two obvious tactics to use against Trump. These are quite obvious, and the only people who do not seem to see their uses are Trump’s American Opponents.
1) Trump is incredibly vulnerable to fakes. Fake him out. Throw a fake at him, and he is sure to respond with angry tweets at 3 in the morning. He will react to the feint.
2) Jab Trump in the nose. Trump always reacts with anger and lashing out.
The fact that Trump’s reactions are so predictable means that an opponent can open with either of these moves, knowing that Trump is almost certain to react as predicted. Thus, either of these options should get Trump badly off-balance and should have moved him into a predictable position for your next blow. This should lead to pre-planned campaigns where Trump is manipulated into one predictable response after another.
There are options that we know will not work against Trump. History teaches us, and Trump confirms, that Appeasement is not an option. And we know that Trump kills negotiators the way Al Pacino did in ‘The Godfather’, so negotiations are not an option. An offer to negotiate from Trump should be regarded as a Death Threat.
I’ve got one thing to say to the Monsters of Minab ….
LOCK THEM UP!
Imagine you went to your favorite sports bar to enjoy a few beers while watching the big game with your best friends, – then observing two clearly-psychotic, hopelessly alcoholic, endlessly shouting and belligerent, violent men at the bar – and both are menacingly waving semi-automatic pistols in the air, including pointing those loaded pistols directly at you and your best friends.
You just might immediately conclude, in that profoundly dangerous moment, that your wisest action is to contact your nearest law enforcement agency.
“two clearly-psychotic, hopelessly alcoholic, endlessly shouting and belligerent, violent men at the bar”….
Are the cops in the proper extension of your metaphor to the present reality.
Well, they can’t be everywhere at once so one tactic would be worldwide activity. Especially in times when they are busy, like now. We can’t rely on most of governments because they have been bought, but grassroots movements can have success if everyone is motivated to contribute a bit. And I think the Trump is the biggest motivator against himself, jut looking at what that clown is doing should disgust any decent person.
Peaceful nations hesitate to take forceful measures against an aggressive empire until backed into a corner. At that point a major bloody conflict ensues. Proactive actions would have been better.
Mad Dog or Satanyahu’s bitch?
It does no matter!
Mr Brener begins with the solution of sorts
then sinks back further to despair if stopping the mad dog.
Diplomacy — dialogue!
Or, all become mad.
Neither. Trump is an easily manipulated simpleton. As it turns out, as reported in the Greyzone, the reason Trump started the war of aggression in Iran is that he was bamboozled by Israel and the FBI into thinking Iran has targeted him for assassination. Think about that: Israel and its neocon supporters here in the the US worked over our imbecile President to start WW3.
Sounds about right.