This is only tangential to the point of the story, but I find it troubling: who decides that a country has become an “adversary”, and how do they make that determination?

You quote Politico calling out “Russia, China, Iran and other adversaries”, and I suppose North Korea belongs in the latter group.

I’m trying to figure out what these countries have in common that brought them the honor of being on the list.

Russia? I thought we got over that after the Soviet Union crumbled. Sure, things didn’t turn out like some people hoped, with Putin rising to the status of Tyrannical Ruler Who Crushes His Opposition, but how is that different from, for example, the Saudis, who I never see listed in the “adversary” column? And, okay, Putin does seem to be rattling sabers lately, but isn’t that to be expected in response to our aggressive actions on his doorstep, e.g. expanding NATO? (BTW, why is NATO still even a thing? I thought it was supposed to be a way to control the putative plan for the USSR to invade Europe. Why wasn’t it disbanded as soon as the USSR went south?)

And China? I really don’t get China. Without China we wouldn’t have most of the inexpensive consumer goods we take for granted. Sure, they’re run by a coterie of despots who control their population through propaganda and surveillance, but if that’s the criterion for getting listed as an “adversary”, why don’t we list our own government, with its secretive, unconstitutional surveillance and its boot-licking corporate media? Is China considered an “adversary” now because it’s competing with our system?

Iran. Well, sure, they sacked our embassy back in ’79. Because for some reason they got tired of the Shah, the tyrant we installed after the CIA infiltrated their country and overthrew their duly-elected government. So they’re our perpetual adversary now because we can’t stand it when people don’t bow down to us and obey the puppets we install?

Okay, North Korea keeps threatening to shoot ICBMs and nuke our West Coast, but you don’t suppose that has anything to do with our threatening to nuke them do you? What would you do if you ran a country and another country was threatening to turn you into a radioactive desert? What if we backed off and let the Koreans work things out amongst themselves? Maybe they wouldn’t be an “adversary” anymore?

So I’m still wondering who creates and maintains this “adversary” list. The place where I keep seeing the term is the mainstream media, and they all seem to agree on who’s on it, so I can’t help wondering if maybe, just maybe, it might be an artifact of the propaganda machine known as “corporate media”, who work closely with the corporate military establishment. It’s important to assure we never run out of enemies so we’ll have perpetual targets for our bombs and tanks and troops.