“America First” is white nationalist KKK platform rooted in late 1800s nativism, which aligned with Nazi Germany, with members indicted for sedition. Now read this.

Early last year, during the opening ⁠months of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, the State Department began preparations to shut down nearly a dozen foreign missions, media outlets reported at the time, as part of ​a broader push by the Republican president ⁠to transform the U.S. bureaucracy so that it is fully aligned with his “America First” agenda.

The most recent State announcement of closures follows the massive cost balloon from losing the Iran war, running out of munitions, with an embarrassing failure to defend military bases.

China maintains diplomatic presence in three of the five cities now being abandoned by American diplomats:

• St. George’s
• Nagoya
• Medan

Grenada is the same island where the US invaded in 1983 partly over Cuban-built airport infrastructure.

Nagoya is Toyota country and the industrial core of a treaty ally.

Medan sits on the Malacca Strait.

The State Department is vacating contested ground.

Footgun.

But wait, the forward presence story gets even worse. Iran has been so devastating in the war, that American sea power is waning. There was no need for them to sink convoys because Iran calculated it’s much cheaper to delete the “load and discharge” points on a map. More reporting should point out Iran is doing what Iran has said it would do for 30 years, asymmetric targeting by hitting logistics weakness, a predictable countermove. The devastating loss of American control over Manama and Duqm ports was not a surprise attack, because it was exactly what should have been expected.

In an update circulated on the morning of 3 March, Inchcape Shipping Services said port operations are partially restricted in Oman in the wake of the attacks. Operations at the Port of Duqm, Asyad Drydock Duqm, and the Port of Salalah General Cargo Terminal are suspended until further notice, Inchcape said.

Operation Praying Mantis in April 1988 taught Iran never to fight the fleet, take away the supplies.

Millennium Challenge 2002 simulated it, and the Red commander sank sixteen ships, including a carrier, before the Pentagon reset the game.

Even DIA’s 2019 “Iran Military Power” report said economics, logistics and bases would be the primary targets.

It’s unforgivable that all this was known cold, and yet America stumbled like a drunkard into self-destructive failures.

Six days before the war launched I laid it out here on this blog.