(End of the American Dream)—War is in the air, and we are seeing some very interesting alliances form. As you will see below, the Russians and the Chinese continue to strengthen ties with one another, and this is something that I have been anticipating for many years. Meanwhile, the president of Turkey is calling for a very alarming alliance of military powers in the Middle East. On Saturday, he told the press that he is urging “Russia, Iran and Syria” to form a united front to protect “Syria’s territorial integrity”…
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan told local media on Saturday that Russia, Iran and Syria should do more to protect Syria’s “territorial integrity.”
“It is essential that Russia, Iran and Syria take more effective measures against this situation, which poses the greatest threat to Syria’s territorial integrity,” Erdoǧan said when asked about the recent alleged Israeli airstrike in the nation’s capital, Damascus.
Obviously Iran and Syria are already working very closely together. But we shall see what Russia and Turkey decide to do.
The Russians definitely have their hands full with Ukraine, and so they don’t really have resources to spare for a war in the Middle East. And Turkey is a member of NATO, and that status would certainly be jeopardized if Erdogan decided to jump into this conflict. But as for Iran and Syria, they are already essentially at war with Israel.
The IDF is constantly bombing targets inside Syria, and the Iranians recently launched about 200 missiles into Israel.
Now we are waiting for the Israeli response, and Iran has already told the Biden administration that it will respond in kind to any Israeli attack…
Iran has informed the United States that it will retaliate against any new attack by Israel, a source in Tehran told CNN. Iran’s government has also been engaging in urgent diplomatic efforts with countries in the Middle East to gauge whether it can reduce the scale of Israel’s response to its missile attack earlier this month and — if that fails — help protect the capital, sources say.
Nobody is backing down this time.
The final showdown between Israel and Iran has arrived, but both sides don’t seem to fully realize this yet.
Meanwhile, the IDF continues to bomb the living daylights out of Hezbollah targets all over Lebanon…
Israel expanded its targets in its war with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon on Monday, killing at least 21 people in an airstrike in the north, health officials said, while millions of Israelis took shelter from projectiles fired back across the border.
So far the main focus of Israel’s military operations in Lebanon has been in the south, the Bekaa Valley in the east and the suburbs of Beirut.
I am expecting some really big escalations in the coming days.
But for the moment we are still waiting for the next big shoe to drop.
At the same time, the Russians and the Chinese just continue to develop closer ties with one another…
Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov arrived in Beijing Monday for talks with his Chinese counterpart, who called for strengthening military cooperation between the two countries.
Moscow and Beijing have forged closer ties since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, an alliance that has sparked anxiety in the West as both countries seek to expand their global influence.
How many years have I been warning about a very strong alliance between Russia and China?
This is precisely what we have been anticipating, but very few people in the western world seem to be alarmed about what is happening.
Despite all of the money that we have poured into Ukraine, the Russians are winning that war.
At this point, the Ukrainians are so desperate for manpower that they are literally dragging young men out of restaurants, clubs and bars in front of everyone…
Ukraine’s military recruiters have launched targeted raids in Kyiv, detaining those whose documents do not comply and press-ganging them into the army.
Video footage captured the moment two men were dragged away by officers as they exited the Palace of Sports on Friday where Ukrainian rock band Okean Elzy played.
One concertgoer could be seen struggling and shouting ‘Get away from me!’ at three policemen as they pulled him towards the recruitment desk set up outside the venue.
A series of raids were carried out at restaurants, clubs, bars and a concert hall in the capital city, according to reports.
Of course the Ukrainians have been quietly doing this sort of thing for a long time, but now they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore.
On the other side of the world, the Chinese just surrounded Taiwan with warships and fighter jets…
On Monday China has launched large military drills encircling the self-governing island of Taiwan, which Taipei has blasted as an “unreasonable provocation”. China’s PLA military deployed warships and fighter jets to send a “stern warning” against “separatist acts of Taiwan independence forces”.
The PLA Eastern Theater Command deployed joint operations of the army, navy, air force and rocket force. These assets have been largely concentrated in the Taiwan Strait, as well as surrounding Taiwan. “The joint drills focused on sea and air combat readiness, blockading key Taiwanese ports and areas, and assaults on maritime and ground targets,” described the eastern theatre command’s spokesperson, senior captain Li Xi.
The good news is that this was just a military exercise.
The Chinese are practicing for a future blockade of Taiwan, and just before the military exercise commenced a video was released that boldly declared that the Chinese military is “prepared for battle at all times and can fight anytime”…
Just before these fresh drills, China’s military issued and circulated a propaganda video entitled “prepared for battle” on vairous social media accounts. The about one-minute video features fighter jets, warships and amphibious assault vessels taking to the air and sea near Taiwan. Mobile rocket launchers are also seen being maneuvered and made ready for attacks. Text associated with the video said Chinese forces are “prepared for battle at all times and can fight anytime.”
A blockade will probably be the very first step that the Chinese take when they decide that it is time to forcibly “reunite” with Taiwan.
And the moment that they establish such a blockade, the U.S. and China will be at war.
Sadly, that could happen a lot sooner than most people think.
Like I said at the beginning of this article, war is in the air.
We are so close to the unthinkable, and our window of opportunity to avoid a global nightmare is rapidly closing.
Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
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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.
