Why the 3 Top Targets for Conquest by the U.S. Empire Must Now Unite

8 August 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

It is, by now, clear that the 3 top targets for conquest by (i.e., for becoming new parts of) the U.S. empire, are Russia, China, and Iran, and that this has been so at least ever since the Soviet Union ended in 1991, and that this is now becoming an increasingly hot, less cold, defensive war by Russia, China, and Iran, against that empire, as each one of these three sovereign and independent countries is recognizing, to its increasing dismay, the designs of the U.S. empire to acquire them by subversion, sanctions, coups, and/or military invasion. Each of these 3 countries must therefore wait no longer, and immediately commence the process to join themselves together into a NATO-like mutual-defense treaty but even tighter and stronger than NATO because this truly is — unlike what NATO ever has been and is — not an imperialistic enterprise serving only one imperial master (America in regard to NATO) but instead anti-imperialistic, and each country remaining as separate and independent nations EXCEPT that they will have ONE united military, which will NOT represent separately any of the 3 member-nations, but having only one unified command-structure and funded by a replacement of each of the 3 nation’s existing percentage of its own annual budget that goes toward its military, by instead that same amount annually supporting this new unified military command. This will also allow each nation to specialize in what it does best.

NATO has three enormous weaknesses, and all 3 of them would be avoided by the unified command-structure that is being proposed here:

1. Different member-nations donate different percentages of their total military expenses to the Treaty’s military command. Each member keeps its membership no matter how much or little it donates to NATO. Free-riding on America’s supposed ‘nuclear umbrella’ disincentivizes NATO-funding.

2. No member-nation has any actual enforced obligation to defend any of the other member-nations. NATO’s Article 5 says only that

“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.”

NATO’s Article 5 has been triggered only once in history: the 9/11 attacks against America. So, I asked ChatGPT “What percentage of the total U.S.-and-allied military expenses responding to the 9/11 attacks against America came from the U.S. Government itself?” and ChatGPT searched all of the Web and reported, including the academic studies and national military expense accounts, and came up with the answer that “The United States government appears to have paid roughly 94–95% of the combined military cost borne by the United States and its allies in the principal post-9/11 wars, with all U.S. allies combined paying only roughly 5–6%.” Almost all of those expenses went to supporting America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which nation had carried out the 9/11 attacks, which had instead been perpetrated by 19 individuals (4 pilots and 15 active assistors), and 15 of the 19 were Saudis, and Saudi officials had donated the funds that had supported them before and while in America, but no Saudi was pursued in U.S. courts, and only Iran — which had supplied none of the perpetrators, and none of their funds — was charged by the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government didn’t care about guilt, nor about having gotten almost nothing from its NATO ‘allies’ (U.S. colonies) for those wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet this was supposedly the only “test” of NATO’s Article 5.

NATO’s Article 5 didn’t even help the imperial center — the U.S. regime itself. How likely would it help a Britain or France or Germany etc. if it became struck by a conventional warhead from let’s call it “The RCI (Russia-China-Iran) Military Alliance,” responding, say, to a warhead manufactured by that U.S-allied (colony) country, which had been fired upon Russia, by Ukrainians, coming from Ukrainian territory? Article 5 doesn’t require ANY member-nation of NATO to join that OTHER member’s hot war against Russia. NATO entails ZERO requirements upon an existing NATO member-nation in order for it to CONTINUE BEING a NATO member. The Treaty has NO expulsion-provision. It thus virtually INVITES free-riding. Moreover: the Treaty has ZERO Amendment-provision; so, repairing it is IMPOSSIBLE to do.

3. NATO also has a third weakness that none of the RCI nations has: whereas in all three of the RCI nations, weaponry is supplied by its own manufacturers none of whom is majority-owned and controlled by greedy private investors looking to maximize their private wealth, but all are instead controlled by the national Government itself, looking to maximize efficiency in service to protecting that country’s national security, so that though the U.S. Government spends annually 65% of the entire world’s military expenses, the top-ranked military is Russia’s, and the #2-ranked is (or at least was) America’s. Clearly, Russia’s is the world’s most battle-hardened, given its war since 2014 to defend itself against all of NATO in Ukraine (where NATO uses Ukrainian soldiers and land). Iran now is the #2 in that regard, by defending itself since June 2025 against both America and Israel. The RCI alliance, in this manner, would transform international relations. The U.S. empire would effectively be ended by it.

Yesterday, on August 6th, I headlined “Why the Trump Administration Must Be Replaced Immediately”, and opened with “They are heading the world straight into a global nuclear war and lying in order to do it.” The article documented that there are strong indications that Trump is inclined to prefer to resort to a surprise nuclear attack against Iran if that would be the only way for him to avoid being militarily defeated by Iran. There might not be much time. On August 7th, the brilliant geostrategic analyst Andrew Korybko headlined “Iran, Not Pakistan, Is Russia’s Only Realistic Southern Gateway To India”, and argued persuasively that Russia needs now to recognize that its own chances for the future will depend much more upon Iran than has been generally acknowledged.

Going forward, it might even be best for all three nations finally to join together as a confederation. Already, both Russia and China are themselves both multilingual and multicultural, as are also Switzerland, Indonesia, and many other countries. Incontestably, that three-way confederation would be the world’s leading nation. Previously, I had argued that a union of just Russia and China would be, and that ideologically they are remarkably similar. I now view Iran as similar in that same sense: deep-seated anti-imperialism. All 3 of them together would be sufficiently self-sufficient so as to be able safely to simply ignore the declining American empire.

—————

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.