Chapter 5, Section I. We Don’t Know Where Iraq Is, and We Don’t Know What Russia Is
- john raymond
- Jul 12
- 3 min read
America is losing a global war—not for lack of weapons, but for lack of understanding. And the most damning evidence is this:
We went to war in a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map. And now, in the midst of World War Three, we are confronting an adversary we still don’t understand—not because it is hidden, but because we’ve stopped asking what it is.
The first failure was geographic. In the early 2000s, polls routinely showed that the majority of Americans could not identify Iraq on a world map, even as we deployed hundreds of thousands of troops there.
This wasn’t a trivial matter. It revealed a profound disconnect between national action and public comprehension. The war was real—but the country remained abstract.
Iraq became a mood, a headline, a backdrop for domestic argument. It was everything except a physical place with people, neighbors, and a position in global power politics. We fought a war on terrain we didn’t care to visualize.
The second failure, now underway, is conceptual. It concerns Russia—not as a landmass, but as a strategic actor.
The American public doesn’t know what Russia is anymore. It has become a blur of half-remembered Cold War iconography, James Bond villainy, and online disinformation jokes.
Is Russia authoritarian? Communist? Christian nationalist? Mafia state? Oil cartel? The answer is yes and no and maybe all at once—and yet, that ambiguity is precisely the point. Russia has become shapeshifting by design, a weaponized ambiguity.
This is Vladimir Putin’s chosen tactic. He doesn’t require Americans to admire him. He only needs us confused. He cultivates a fog of identity, alternating between czarist nostalgia and anti-colonial rhetoric, between Orthodox moralism and gangster capitalism.
In doing so, he becomes harder to define—and therefore harder to resist. Americans don’t know what to fear, because they don’t know what they’re looking at.
This ambiguity isn’t accidental. It is asymmetric strategy. In the post-nuclear era, you don’t have to beat your enemy’s army—you only need to cloud their minds. If your adversary can’t name your goals, or understand your nature, they cannot organize resistance.
Putin thrives in the space between categories. He attacks without declaring. He occupies without flags. He sabotages trust through contradiction. He is both the strongman and the victim, the peace broker and the warlord.
And into this confusion steps Donald Trump—over and over again.
Trump has consistently served Putin’s ambiguity. He echoes Russian propaganda lines, blurs distinctions between ally and adversary, and casts doubt on U.S. intelligence assessments.
His public statements regularly disorient rather than clarify. He may not have invented the American blindness toward Russia, but he has sharpened it into something strategic. He has helped convert it into "policy."
Trump’s pattern is not one of isolated mistakes. It is repetition—of confusion, of deference, of disinformation.
He praises Putin as “strong” while attacking NATO. He questions the need for defending Eastern Europe while holding back critical aid.
When caught contradicting himself, he shrugs—because the goal is not consistency, but entropy. Under Trump, American strategy toward Russia has often resembled a tangle of emotional whims, broken promises, and theatrical posturing.
This is not accidental disarray. It is useful chaos—for Putin.
The problem is not just one man. It is the culture that enables him. A public that doesn’t know where Iraq is will not ask why Ukraine matters. A population that sees Russia only through myth will not notice betrayal when it comes dressed in ambiguity.
Our vulnerability is not just physical. It is epistemic.
We have not just lost the map. We’ve lost the capacity to draw one now that the battlefield is of the mind.
This is the fundamental weakness in America’s role in World War Three.
We lack both the global awareness and the abstract reasoning to perceive the shape of the conflict we are already in...
Our adversaries don’t need us to love them. They only need us to remain dazed, unfocused, and internally distracted. They win not through tanks, but through our own inattention.
We didn’t know where Iraq was—and we don’t know what Russia is.
That is not a coincidence. It is the same blindness in a new form.
Until we learn to see clearly, we will continue to stumble through the fog, losing wars we don’t even know to admit exist.
Comments