(End of the American Dream)—Before our leaders drag us into the middle of World War III, perhaps we should step back and take a hard look at our own capabilities. Military recruiting has been way down, ammunition levels have fallen to dangerously low levels because of how much we have sent to Ukraine, and our enemies have developed cutting edge new weapons systems that we cannot match. But Joe Biden and his all-star team of warmongers continue to push everyone around as if this was the 1980s and everyone is still deeply afraid of the U.S. military.
It is time for all of us to acknowledge that the world has changed.
In 2021, the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan and the Taliban reconquered the entire country even before we were able to get everyone out.
In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, and despite the fact that we have sent them giant mountains of money the Ukrainians are losing more territory with each passing day.
In 2023, a major war erupted in the Middle East. U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria have already been attacked more than 100 times because Iranian-backed forces are not afraid of us. And a naval battle that resulted in the destruction of three Houthi vessels just made headlines all over the planet…
A naval battle likely to send shockwaves throughout the Middle East erupted in the early hours of Sunday after US helicopters intervened in support of a container ship trying to navigate the key trade route.
Four vessels with mounted weapons and small arms coming from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen fired upon the Singapore-flagged Maersk Hangzhou and got within 20 metres of the ship, according to the US military.
This aggressive move prompted helicopters from nearby US warships to respond to the distress call. The military said that, after the aircraft were shot at by the Houthis, they sank three “small boats” in “self-defence”.
The truth is that the U.S. is already at war in the Middle East.
And once Israel decides it is time to push Hezbollah back to the Litani River in southern Lebanon, the U.S. is going to be even more deeply involved. Meanwhile, it appears that the conflict in Ukraine is about to go to another level.
The Ukrainians have been shelling civilian targets in the Russian city of Belgorod in order to provoke the Russians into doing something really dramatic which will make lots of headlines and cause more military aid to come flowing in from the western world.
Vladimir Putin is extremely angry about the attacks on Belgorod, and he is vowing to “intensify strikes”…
Vladimir Putin vowed to unleash hell on Ukraine saying his forces would “intensify” their attacks on the country following strikes in Russia’s Belgorod region on Saturday.
Speaking during a New Year’s Day visit to a military hospital, Putin said Ukraine could expect more such strikes after shelling of the Russian border city of Belgorod that killed more than two dozen people and wounded more than 100 others.
“They want to intimidate us and create uncertainty within our country. We will intensify strikes. Not a single crime against our civilian population will go unpunished,” the Russian leader said, describing the barrage of Belgorod as a “terrorist act.”
Over the past couple of years, the U.S. has provided far more funding for the war in Ukraine than anyone else, far more weapons for the war in Ukraine than anyone else, far more ammunition for the war in Ukraine than anyone else and far more intelligence for the war in Ukraine than anyone else.
And now Joe Biden is warning that there is a risk that “the United States gets pulled in directly”…
“The stakes of this fight extend far beyond Ukraine,” Biden reiterated Friday. “They affect the entirety of the NATO alliance, the security of Europe, and the future of the transatlantic relationship.
“When dictators and autocrats are allowed to run roughshod in Europe, the risk rises that the United States gets pulled in directly. And the consequences reverberate around the world. We cannot let our allies and partners down. We cannot let Ukraine down. History will judge harshly those who fail to answer freedom’s call.”
So could we end up being directly involved in a major war in the Middle East and a major war with Russia at the same time?
Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping just warned that “reunification” with Taiwan is a “historical inevitability”…
“The reunification of the motherland is a historical inevitability,” Xi said, though the official English translation of his remarks published by the Xinhua news agency used a more simple phrase: “China will surely be reunified.”
“Compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” he added. The official English translation wrote “all Chinese” rather than “compatriots.”
So will Xi Jinping attempt to “reunify” with Taiwan in 2024?
Most Americans don’t realize this, but the moment that China makes a move against Taiwan we will be at war with the Chinese.
But can our military actually handle a war with China?
A retired U.S. Army Colonel recently wrote an article in which he claimed that once such a war starts “American forces will likely burn through munitions stocks within three weeks”…
In a U.S. fight with China, American forces will likely burn through munitions stocks within three weeks. Even with a surge of the U.S. industrial base, replenishing stocks will take more than six months. In the interim, the U.S. will be without sufficient bombs and bullets for its cutting-edge systems, such as fifth-generation fighter jets and High Mobility Rocket Launcher Systems, and anti-air missiles needed to protect our nuclear aircraft carriers and bases in the Pacific.
Right now, the warning indicators are blinking red. The massive need for ammunition in such conflicts highlights weaknesses in the American defense industry, which no longer produces munitions at the rate it did decades ago. The post-Cold War defense budget reductions led to a swift merger of the defense sector, which saw a drop from fifty-one major defense providers in the early 1990s to five by the end of that decade. This consolidation led to a tightened capacity.
If all of that is true, how in the world can we possibly fight a war with China?
And how in the world can we possibly fight a war with Russia?
And let us not forget that Kim Jong Un continues to make threats about going to war with us…
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his military should “thoroughly annihilate” the United States and South Korea if provoked, state media reported Monday, after he vowed to boost national defense to cope with what he called an unprecedented U.S.-led confrontation.
North Korea has increased its warlike rhetoric in recent months in response to an expansion of U.S.-South Korean military drills. Experts expect Kim will continue to escalate his rhetoric and weapons tests because he likely believes he can use heightened tensions to wrest U.S. concessions if former President Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election in November.
I believe that 2024 will be a year of war, and in my new book entitled “Chaos” I explain in great detail why the United States is not even close to ready.
In recent years our military has been gutted, eviscerated and transformed into a politically-correct joke.
We couldn’t even defeat the Taliban, and now we are faced with the possibility of fighting three major wars simultaneously.
We are in so much trouble, but most Americans seem to believe that we are still the same global military powerhouse that we were when the first Top Gun movie was originally released.
Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
The USA has not won a war since WW2.
ONLY a never–served Snyder would pose a monstrously INANE question like that —- go ask the Taliban, Snyder!!!
Any chance you related to that thieving Larry King?! Used to listen to him on my way home from a night shift, but switched him off in 1978 when he trashed all US military veterans with a fellow DRAFT DODGER chosenite from Wall Street (don’t know if he was a thief like Larry King, but suspect so)!
“Most Americans don’t realize this, but the moment that China makes a move against Taiwan we will be at war with the Chinese.”
Of course, all sarcasm and snide remarks aside, we have been at war with China for quite some time, but still unrecognized!
Having served in several branches of the US military, at both grunt and senior command levels (as an enlisted man), my feelings of absolute revulsion when researching the details of the USS Bonhomme Richard Debacle explain why I have ZERO, ZERO, ZERO confidence in the military, DoD/Pentgon!
The mass incompetence, dereliction of duty, treason at the highest command levels would have been inconceivable not that many years ago!?!?
Fully agree with Mr. Snyder’s final four paragraphs — apologies for previous snarky comments but am so distressed at what is to come!!!