" By far the most important objectives of this entire situation are the following:
1. Destroy Russia-German relations
2. Unplug Europe from Russian energy
3. Make Europe, conversely, dependent on US energy
4. Bankrupt and de-industrialize Europe to keep it submissive to US hegemonic power
And guess what? On pretty much all of these points the US has succeeded with flying colors. A grand, unparalleled victory. "
This - and I have believed for abut 3 years now.
Ergo - chaos and mayhem left in Ukraine, weapons spilling over into crime and terrorism across Europe, huge losses of life, all of these are Goals of the US, not side effects, let alone regretted collateral damage.
Friedman's comments were 2015. This has been a very long term plan, and the success of the Kiev Coup was never an end goal, nor was the capture of Crimea. It was always about creating a massive pit of chaos between Europe and both Russia and the end of OBOR.
Simplicius - I'm sorry for the trivial nature of this comment, but I had to stop reading at your 6th paragraph under the news clip with the 12-year old, to write this before going back to finish.
You poked one of my long-standing hot buttons.
There is no such word as "irregardless". Regardless is the correct usage.
Nevertheless. I think you are one of the most perceptive commentators on the current situation and I thoroughly enjoy your long-form treatment of these issues. Critical thinking at its best.
A brilliant piece btw, just getting to read your things recently.
"The Chinese Yuan has reportedly been steadily climbing up the charts recently of most circulated global currencies, at #5 now. If China can truly woo Saudi Arabia and Iran into joining BRICs and then slowly bring them toward more trade turnover in Yuan, then it will be the true final nail in the coffin of the US dollar supremacy, petrodollar, ‘privilege exorbitanté’, etc.
But, like I mentioned, I do think there are still many pitfalls and detours ahead, as the US / banking cabal will go down fighting."
Good - you seem to be avoiding the obvious error here where people interpret pricing in non-dollar currencies as making the slightest difference. The issue is entirely about where can one place a hot $billion worth or two in single trades. To facilitate that kind of transaction a currency one needs a huge money market, and a huge money market needs some enormous and reasonably credit worthy borrowers. To find those borrowers you need to find countries with huge twin Budget and Trade deficits. The Yuan is not going to compete with the Dollar as a reserve currency in the next 30 years. Mind the dollar could self-explode leaving a vacuum.
With the exception of Germany the west especially the US and UK are financial parasitic Rentier extraction economies, leaching off the world. The western world is north of 800M people and are unable to supply armaments to the Cannon fodder in Ukraine. Russia is south of 150M and is able to produce more than enough. Russia is graduating more Engineers than the USA with more than double the population. China which builds destroyers for a seventh of the US cost want's their belt and road to run to Europe through the Ukraine and of course the US is as horrified by that as by Germany and Russia combining. You know, "keep the Americans in the Russians out and the Germans down"! I'm Canadian so I understand the methods the US uses to keep us as a vassal state. WHY the larger European states prostrate themselves obsiquously before the Empire always baffles me. The French were the last to resist US "culture?" and national treatment of foreign capital and they once ran their president out of the country and now the president is a Rothschild bankster and they prostrate themselves. The Germans have been taught self flagellation and self hate since WWII so I understand them better and of course they were/are an occupied country. You would think they like the Japanese would hate the people who fire bombed the defenceless women and children to horrific deaths but such is the power of indoctrination. Ultimately the "golden billion" led by the US of BS will be forced to join the world of production and give up the parasitic rent extraction but apparently millions have to die first. So sad, So sick!
"You can’t get more credentialed than these US Army generals"
Actually, as Andrei Martyanov has been pointing out ad nauseum for years, you can. You can get a Russian general. For that matter, you can get any Russian officer who's been through the Russian military academic process, such as Andrei himself.
As he likes to say, these American generals "never won shit in their lives" and their opinions on modern war are shaped by using overwhelming air and naval power and Tomahawk missiles on Third World countries with next to zero air defenses plus modern main battle tanks against the 1950's and 1960's equivalents in countries like Iraq.against poorly trained and poorly led forces. And after they proclaim "mission accomplished", they proceed to lose the peace against insurgents with AK-47's and RPGs and IEDs.
Speaking of where we come from, my own progression started, not with 9/11 exactly, but with the ensuing Iraq war. I predicted at a site called iraqwar.com - a site which allegedly was fed information during the war from the Russian GRU - in April, 2003, that Saddam had ordered his forces to stand down and go on an insurgency. That proved to be correct.
I followed that up by learning about US neocons and Israel and their history of antipathy to Iran. I started predicting a war with Iran in 2006, and while that hasn't happened - yet - I'm still convinced it is inevitable as historically two countries with such enmity usually end up in a war.
I didn't follow the Georgian war much, but then came Ukraine, 2014. I followed that closely on sites like SouthFront and Colonel Cassad. Eventually I discovered <a href="https://www.moonofalabama.org/">Moon of Alabama</a>, the premier site for foreign policy analysis.
What helped me the most in avoiding being brainwashed by the mainstream media is my history as an anarchist. When you know the state is always wrong, it's not hard to see through the daily lies.
My own awakening occurred as a “Door Kicker” in the employ of a major (once) European Nation during the forever wars ... Afghanistan & Iraq ... by then I was not a young man ... I had seen the Balkans & Kosovo & already had my doubts.
What happened after 9/11 & how we were deployed & utilised confirmed my fears.
Your assessments are on point & I have read much of the same material as you did as I followed the events unfolding in Libya & Syria.
Keep up the good work all the best wishes from me quartered safe out here.
I agree with your comments about the US / UK strategy to keep Germany and Russia apart. It’s a classic imperial divide and rule strategy.
The complication, of course, is that China is now newly powerful and effectively allied with Russia. In previous wars of the last century, China did not matter so much. The China Russia friendship feels a more problematic alliance in today’s world than Germany and Russia. It has also intensified as a result of American behaviour towards both countries. Without the Ukraine conflict it is hard to see that it would have developed so quickly. Especially given that Russia’s elite instincts since Peter The Great have been to westernize.
I guess though that if one were to run the scenarios, the people who control US foreign policy see a conflict of some form with China as inevitable. In their minds, it was worth a shot at destabilizing Russia and hoping to put her back into her 90s vassal status under Yeltsin first. That seems to have failed but the US still achieves continued hegemony over Europe, which is not a bad second best outcome. In their minds. But I think they are wrong. They have unleashed forces that will be very hard to control. Europe will eventually also wake up.
As someone who studied history I was used to the open essay type of traditional exam question. I can imagine that a classic exam question of the future about this conflict might be: “Destroying the Nordstream pipeline was the principal objective of America’s policy in Ukraine from 2014 to 2022, not the sideshow that it was often presented as at the time.” Discuss.
I wonder who pays Wagner. The DPR? The Russian MoD? After all, it's a private company. Where comes the salary of the mercenaries from? Also, does Wagner buy the iskanders, etc.? Or are they 'gifts' from the MoD?
Great stuff. Look at my profile to see who I am. Can't afford to contribute at the moment (unon dues, strikes etc) Based in Bristol in England (NOT the United Kingdom! ) Down with Ukania!
One question I have about force composition that you may be able to answer, or may at least have light to shed, is the number, role, and legal, political, and cultural position of mercenary corps in Russia. (I chose the term mercenary corps to try to be as agnostic as possible about what those organizations actually are. If I've chosen poorly, I apologize. I'm aware PMC is more commonly used, but I'm under a possibly false impression that calling an organization a PMC is to make a specific legal claim about its status and purpose.)
One relatively common refrain I've heard from various pro-Western sources is that the existence and extensive use of mercenary corps in the SMO, Wagner being only the most obvious example, is proof of corruption, or militarily disadvantageous due to organizational duplication, or driven by political infighting with PMCs being to Russian politicians what NGOs are to American ones - a source of both cultural clout and money laundering. Some of this doesn't pass the sniff test: integrated mercenary corps are long-standing parts of various militaries (Légion étrangère anyone?) and nobody's arguing that the US military is secretly just about to fall apart because USG employs PMCs to guard CIA assets.
However, it's also clear that, despite their apparent illegality under Russian law (and I stress apparent! I'm no Russian legal scholar, and the sources I've heard that from aren't exactly sympathetic), PMCs proliferate pretty heavily in Russia, with clear lines of patronage from various political personalities. Shoigu has his very own, for instance.
As someone much more informed than I am regarding Russian politics, culture, and possibly legal structure, maybe you can explain it in a way that isn't the infantile "Russia has PMCs, therefore Russia is politically fragmented and corrupt, therefore Russia is losing," as if every military that ever won a war didn't have problems and internal contradictions.
(I mean, come on, Admiral King absolutely hated the Washington bureau circle and the entire idea of ABDA, and if you've heard of BUSHIPS' handling of the Mk14 torpedo, you have a story of bureaucratic intransigence, incompetence, and corruption much worse than anything that's come out of Russia since Putin was first elected, yet the Allies still prevailed over the Japanese.)
I’m not sure if you’re Russian but I’ve noticed that Russians (and Serbians) tend to really understand what is going on and ready to speak out of it while the large majority of people in the west are ignoramuses (except for a select few and when they do they’re great)
I somewhat disagree on the balance of weapons usage. It does seem negotiated. In trench warfare, I would expect napalm and cluster bombs, especially downward bursting cluster bombs. to be most effective. I understand not using napalm (illegal), but Turkey was the first to offer Ukraine cluster munitions, which I expect is because Russia wants to use them. And now glide bomb to glide bomb seems planned, as does Armadas vs. Leopards. There was Z visiting Bakmut at the same time as a Russian official. (forget name). Many prisoner swaps, and what happened with the entire internal ministry of Ukraine going down in a helicopter crash? The next escalation is who sets off the false flag and when do the Russians shut or shoot down military satellites, then the new mini-nukes and mini-neutron bombs the US has used previously (G. Duff/ VT).
" By far the most important objectives of this entire situation are the following:
1. Destroy Russia-German relations
2. Unplug Europe from Russian energy
3. Make Europe, conversely, dependent on US energy
4. Bankrupt and de-industrialize Europe to keep it submissive to US hegemonic power
And guess what? On pretty much all of these points the US has succeeded with flying colors. A grand, unparalleled victory. "
This - and I have believed for abut 3 years now.
Ergo - chaos and mayhem left in Ukraine, weapons spilling over into crime and terrorism across Europe, huge losses of life, all of these are Goals of the US, not side effects, let alone regretted collateral damage.
Friedman's comments were 2015. This has been a very long term plan, and the success of the Kiev Coup was never an end goal, nor was the capture of Crimea. It was always about creating a massive pit of chaos between Europe and both Russia and the end of OBOR.
Simplicius - I'm sorry for the trivial nature of this comment, but I had to stop reading at your 6th paragraph under the news clip with the 12-year old, to write this before going back to finish.
You poked one of my long-standing hot buttons.
There is no such word as "irregardless". Regardless is the correct usage.
Nevertheless. I think you are one of the most perceptive commentators on the current situation and I thoroughly enjoy your long-form treatment of these issues. Critical thinking at its best.
Stay safe out there.
The q&a is fine as often as you feel will satisfy your paid subscribers. More often if you like.
A brilliant piece btw, just getting to read your things recently.
"The Chinese Yuan has reportedly been steadily climbing up the charts recently of most circulated global currencies, at #5 now. If China can truly woo Saudi Arabia and Iran into joining BRICs and then slowly bring them toward more trade turnover in Yuan, then it will be the true final nail in the coffin of the US dollar supremacy, petrodollar, ‘privilege exorbitanté’, etc.
But, like I mentioned, I do think there are still many pitfalls and detours ahead, as the US / banking cabal will go down fighting."
Good - you seem to be avoiding the obvious error here where people interpret pricing in non-dollar currencies as making the slightest difference. The issue is entirely about where can one place a hot $billion worth or two in single trades. To facilitate that kind of transaction a currency one needs a huge money market, and a huge money market needs some enormous and reasonably credit worthy borrowers. To find those borrowers you need to find countries with huge twin Budget and Trade deficits. The Yuan is not going to compete with the Dollar as a reserve currency in the next 30 years. Mind the dollar could self-explode leaving a vacuum.
With the exception of Germany the west especially the US and UK are financial parasitic Rentier extraction economies, leaching off the world. The western world is north of 800M people and are unable to supply armaments to the Cannon fodder in Ukraine. Russia is south of 150M and is able to produce more than enough. Russia is graduating more Engineers than the USA with more than double the population. China which builds destroyers for a seventh of the US cost want's their belt and road to run to Europe through the Ukraine and of course the US is as horrified by that as by Germany and Russia combining. You know, "keep the Americans in the Russians out and the Germans down"! I'm Canadian so I understand the methods the US uses to keep us as a vassal state. WHY the larger European states prostrate themselves obsiquously before the Empire always baffles me. The French were the last to resist US "culture?" and national treatment of foreign capital and they once ran their president out of the country and now the president is a Rothschild bankster and they prostrate themselves. The Germans have been taught self flagellation and self hate since WWII so I understand them better and of course they were/are an occupied country. You would think they like the Japanese would hate the people who fire bombed the defenceless women and children to horrific deaths but such is the power of indoctrination. Ultimately the "golden billion" led by the US of BS will be forced to join the world of production and give up the parasitic rent extraction but apparently millions have to die first. So sad, So sick!
This insightful summary as answers to questions we all have is the best thing evah! Thanks so much.
"You can’t get more credentialed than these US Army generals"
Actually, as Andrei Martyanov has been pointing out ad nauseum for years, you can. You can get a Russian general. For that matter, you can get any Russian officer who's been through the Russian military academic process, such as Andrei himself.
As he likes to say, these American generals "never won shit in their lives" and their opinions on modern war are shaped by using overwhelming air and naval power and Tomahawk missiles on Third World countries with next to zero air defenses plus modern main battle tanks against the 1950's and 1960's equivalents in countries like Iraq.against poorly trained and poorly led forces. And after they proclaim "mission accomplished", they proceed to lose the peace against insurgents with AK-47's and RPGs and IEDs.
Speaking of where we come from, my own progression started, not with 9/11 exactly, but with the ensuing Iraq war. I predicted at a site called iraqwar.com - a site which allegedly was fed information during the war from the Russian GRU - in April, 2003, that Saddam had ordered his forces to stand down and go on an insurgency. That proved to be correct.
I followed that up by learning about US neocons and Israel and their history of antipathy to Iran. I started predicting a war with Iran in 2006, and while that hasn't happened - yet - I'm still convinced it is inevitable as historically two countries with such enmity usually end up in a war.
I didn't follow the Georgian war much, but then came Ukraine, 2014. I followed that closely on sites like SouthFront and Colonel Cassad. Eventually I discovered <a href="https://www.moonofalabama.org/">Moon of Alabama</a>, the premier site for foreign policy analysis.
What helped me the most in avoiding being brainwashed by the mainstream media is my history as an anarchist. When you know the state is always wrong, it's not hard to see through the daily lies.
Excellent work my friend.
My own awakening occurred as a “Door Kicker” in the employ of a major (once) European Nation during the forever wars ... Afghanistan & Iraq ... by then I was not a young man ... I had seen the Balkans & Kosovo & already had my doubts.
What happened after 9/11 & how we were deployed & utilised confirmed my fears.
Your assessments are on point & I have read much of the same material as you did as I followed the events unfolding in Libya & Syria.
Keep up the good work all the best wishes from me quartered safe out here.
Can We Multitask (watch the West/Ukraine/Russia)? And be alert to events Downfield?
A. "Shift of tectonic plates in the 20th century geopolitics." (China/Iran/SaudiArabia)
Ref. Indianpunchline.com.
B. Fukushima water discharging and the global food chain consequences. "Tritium replaces
stable hydrogen atoms in the human body causing radiation syndrome and cancers."
Ref. news.cgtn.com
I agree with your comments about the US / UK strategy to keep Germany and Russia apart. It’s a classic imperial divide and rule strategy.
The complication, of course, is that China is now newly powerful and effectively allied with Russia. In previous wars of the last century, China did not matter so much. The China Russia friendship feels a more problematic alliance in today’s world than Germany and Russia. It has also intensified as a result of American behaviour towards both countries. Without the Ukraine conflict it is hard to see that it would have developed so quickly. Especially given that Russia’s elite instincts since Peter The Great have been to westernize.
I guess though that if one were to run the scenarios, the people who control US foreign policy see a conflict of some form with China as inevitable. In their minds, it was worth a shot at destabilizing Russia and hoping to put her back into her 90s vassal status under Yeltsin first. That seems to have failed but the US still achieves continued hegemony over Europe, which is not a bad second best outcome. In their minds. But I think they are wrong. They have unleashed forces that will be very hard to control. Europe will eventually also wake up.
As someone who studied history I was used to the open essay type of traditional exam question. I can imagine that a classic exam question of the future about this conflict might be: “Destroying the Nordstream pipeline was the principal objective of America’s policy in Ukraine from 2014 to 2022, not the sideshow that it was often presented as at the time.” Discuss.
I wonder who pays Wagner. The DPR? The Russian MoD? After all, it's a private company. Where comes the salary of the mercenaries from? Also, does Wagner buy the iskanders, etc.? Or are they 'gifts' from the MoD?
Great stuff. Look at my profile to see who I am. Can't afford to contribute at the moment (unon dues, strikes etc) Based in Bristol in England (NOT the United Kingdom! ) Down with Ukania!
One question I have about force composition that you may be able to answer, or may at least have light to shed, is the number, role, and legal, political, and cultural position of mercenary corps in Russia. (I chose the term mercenary corps to try to be as agnostic as possible about what those organizations actually are. If I've chosen poorly, I apologize. I'm aware PMC is more commonly used, but I'm under a possibly false impression that calling an organization a PMC is to make a specific legal claim about its status and purpose.)
One relatively common refrain I've heard from various pro-Western sources is that the existence and extensive use of mercenary corps in the SMO, Wagner being only the most obvious example, is proof of corruption, or militarily disadvantageous due to organizational duplication, or driven by political infighting with PMCs being to Russian politicians what NGOs are to American ones - a source of both cultural clout and money laundering. Some of this doesn't pass the sniff test: integrated mercenary corps are long-standing parts of various militaries (Légion étrangère anyone?) and nobody's arguing that the US military is secretly just about to fall apart because USG employs PMCs to guard CIA assets.
However, it's also clear that, despite their apparent illegality under Russian law (and I stress apparent! I'm no Russian legal scholar, and the sources I've heard that from aren't exactly sympathetic), PMCs proliferate pretty heavily in Russia, with clear lines of patronage from various political personalities. Shoigu has his very own, for instance.
As someone much more informed than I am regarding Russian politics, culture, and possibly legal structure, maybe you can explain it in a way that isn't the infantile "Russia has PMCs, therefore Russia is politically fragmented and corrupt, therefore Russia is losing," as if every military that ever won a war didn't have problems and internal contradictions.
(I mean, come on, Admiral King absolutely hated the Washington bureau circle and the entire idea of ABDA, and if you've heard of BUSHIPS' handling of the Mk14 torpedo, you have a story of bureaucratic intransigence, incompetence, and corruption much worse than anything that's come out of Russia since Putin was first elected, yet the Allies still prevailed over the Japanese.)
I fully understand your position on credentials and background. Anonymity and privacy is a right.
BUT: Consider being presented by a YouTube panel of SMO experts with just pictures of:
Larry Johnson
Andrei Martyanov
The Saiker (Andrei Revsky)
Brian Berlitic
Col. McGregor
Gilbert Doctorow
Ray McGovern
Scott Ritter
It is their professional background and life experience that draws us to their analysis. That is what initially elevated the credibility of them all.
We don’t need or want your picture. I wish we didn’t have theirs! ;)
How do you write all this?! That’s amazing!
I’m not sure if you’re Russian but I’ve noticed that Russians (and Serbians) tend to really understand what is going on and ready to speak out of it while the large majority of people in the west are ignoramuses (except for a select few and when they do they’re great)
I somewhat disagree on the balance of weapons usage. It does seem negotiated. In trench warfare, I would expect napalm and cluster bombs, especially downward bursting cluster bombs. to be most effective. I understand not using napalm (illegal), but Turkey was the first to offer Ukraine cluster munitions, which I expect is because Russia wants to use them. And now glide bomb to glide bomb seems planned, as does Armadas vs. Leopards. There was Z visiting Bakmut at the same time as a Russian official. (forget name). Many prisoner swaps, and what happened with the entire internal ministry of Ukraine going down in a helicopter crash? The next escalation is who sets off the false flag and when do the Russians shut or shoot down military satellites, then the new mini-nukes and mini-neutron bombs the US has used previously (G. Duff/ VT).