US Foreign Policy & Geopolitics

[Crafty_Dog]

High quality piece there BBG.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20384/global-order-nuclear-iran

[Crafty_Dog]

February 13, 2024
View On Website
Open as PDF

Putin’s Perspective on the Russia-Ukraine War
By: George Friedman
Russian President Vladimir Putin did something unprecedented last week: He held a two-hour press conference directed at the American public. It was not exactly a press conference, in the sense that Tucker Carlson, a talk show host perceived as sympathetic toward Russia, was the only reporter present. But neither was it, strictly speaking, an interview, as for most of the program, Putin held forth without the benefit of questions. In a sense, this made it more valuable because it allowed Putin to set out his views in an interesting and important way that might not have been possible had Carlson asked questions that were focused on an American perspective.

Instead, we got a genuine Russian perspective on the war in Ukraine, and Putin appeared to be a reasonable and thoughtful man. He made some very dubious claims, but every leader makes dubious claims while appearing statesmanlike, and Putin’s behavior drove home to an American audience that his position is not without some merit. He also made clear that he is a Russian patriot working for Russian interests, and it is in this spirit that we should take his claims. He did not want to appear like Stalin. He also seemed enormously knowledgeable, far beyond most politicians, though he did have the advantage of knowing what was to be said as well as a translator who always stood between him and his audience. But I believe this was Putin, helped by prepackaged questions, providing a sense of his broad knowledge. If this worked, then he showed that Russia was ruled by a sophisticated thinker. However, given the interview’s length and complexity, the American public may have given up early and not listened to the complete interview.

Still, the historical context, the targeting of an American audience, and the extraordinarily detailed description of Russia and Russian history seem to be setting the stage for negotiations. In defense of Russia’s attack, Putin charged the U.S. and NATO with dishonesty and duplicity in facing Russia, which was simply pursuing its historical imperative. This was no ordinary program, nor was it self-indulgent rambling; Putin’s emphasis on the failure of negotiations in Turkey early in the war makes this clear.

Putin’s central presentation concerned Russian history. He explained how Russia was formed many centuries ago and contrasted this with Eastern Europe’s formation. In this way he argued that Ukraine had always been part of Russia, physically and linguistically. Unstated but implicit in his argument, Ukraine is Russia, and the invasion of Ukraine simply represents the Russian world’s return to an older reality. This is why, according to Putin, Russia’s actions in Ukraine constitute a special military operation and not an act of war. He also spoke of Poland, hinting that Poland and Lithuania are renegades whose roots are inseparable from Russia. The discussion of Russian history was lengthy, but it was not merely academic. Putin’s argument was that history binds a place to its surroundings and its inhabitants and, in this case, gives Russia the right to make claims on foreign territory. I admired the way he slipped in his claims to the region in a way that might be dismissed or overlooked. He did, however, lay the foundation for Russian claims in Poland.

Some of what Putin said was confusing. For example, he asserted that the current Ukrainian government and its predecessors were Nazis and therefore were an enemy of Russia. He cited two men who had become Nazi collaborators before concluding that this made Ukraine a remnant of Nazi Germany and therefore hostile to Russia and other countries that had fought Hitler. This left me confused, as there is no country that was occupied by the Germans that didn’t have collaborators, from France to the Netherlands and so on. Some may have been ideologically Nazis, but all were seeking to survive or prosper. Putin made this argument from the beginning, but if followed logically it would compel Russia to invade most of Europe as a moral obligation. Putin showed himself to be highly sophisticated, so he must understand what he is saying and depend on the world to not understand his claims or take them seriously.

In another part, while expressing his readiness to negotiate, Putin said the United States was damaging itself by using the dollar to compel foreign powers to align with its worldview. He then claimed, in his most baffling remarks, that China’s economy dwarves America’s and that its economic future is bright. It is as if he has missed China’s reality in the two years since Ukraine was attacked. He said this in the context of claiming that a new economic order is emerging, and for that to happen, China must drive it. It is interesting that Putin’s seriously deep analysis of things, even if parts are debatable, concluded with obviously wrong assertions, but he was at it for a long time and was probably tired.

One other thing that struck me was his remarks about Russia’s intercontinental hypersonic missiles. The speed and maneuverability of hypersonics make defense against an attack – in the U.S. or elsewhere – very difficult. I advocated the development of intercontinental hypersonics in my book “The Future of War.” The U.S. has not yet fielded a hypersonic missile, nor do I have any evidence that it is developing an intercontinental version. If Russia’s intercontinental hypersonic missile is as capable as Putin suggested, then that may have been the most significant thing he said.

The rest of Putin’s remarks consisted of complaints about NATO and the United States and his insistence that the uprising in Kyiv in 2014 was the real beginning of the war. He left unexplained how Russia could have ignored such a terrible threat for so long.

Putin is the president of a modern nation-state, so he must explain his policies to his people and try to influence other governments and foreign publics. The goal is not to be truthful but persuasive in order to put other governments under carefully shaped pressure. What can be said is that Russia has stepped fully into modernity with an excellent presentation of truth and myths while allowing Carlson a few rebuttals. Putin saw him as friendly but a wild card, so few cards were dealt to him.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://americanmind.org/salvo/saving-americas-future-from-the-blob/?utm_campaign=American%20Mind%20Email%20Warm%20Up&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=294382011&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8an-zpCsOHsTzWoqF-47zhDCfee3VX1AZB784bu8koIE_DCIjFi0yoFKjPZtEXA1sd6kMHNBVknhKClZL-10PFZb0yUQ&utm_content=294382011&utm_source=hs_email

===========================

https://dc.claremont.org/restoring-american-manufacturing-a-practical-guide/

[DougMacG]

From a 'related link' in the Russia-China story:

"Russia must know that a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought."
  - NATO General Secretary, Jens Stoltenberg

https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/vladimir-putin-nuclear-war-targets-32243272

Think about that. NATO leader (from Norway) admits it. The reason nuclear war, any war, would not be fought is deterrence.  Peace through strength.  If you attack you will regret it.

Meanwhile we neglect to replenish our munitions and modernize our fleets to meet the known risks, much less being ready to face the unknown unknowns.

NATO estimates that Norway will spend 1.7% of GDP on defense in 2023.
https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/norway-defense-and-aerospace-technologies
Oops, wasn't that supposed to be 2%.

May 2, 2023 - Norway aims to raise its defence spending to at least 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2026, in line with a long-held goal among members of the NATO alliance, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said on Tuesday.

[Doug]  I thought Putin wasn't a threat. Are they afraid of Britain, Sweden?

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fagtI6MOCUo

[Crafty_Dog]

Uncle Sam’s Guide to Peace and Prosperity
American economic and military might can underwrite a new economic and security commons.
By Kevin Warsh
March 19, 2024 1:31 pm ET
WSJ

Economic and geopolitical instability are frequent bedfellows. That’s because policy errors are contagious. Absent the creation of a new American-led economic and security framework, it’s doubtful the U.S. can sustain prosperity and achieve a durable peace.

Massive government spending, surging debt burdens and bank rescues over the past several years have alarmed America’s allies and emboldened its adversaries. The surge in inflation has added considerable weight to America’s woes. It shocked central banks, knocked the economy, and prompted foreign adversaries to challenge America’s geopolitical standing.

The U.S. government is striving to mask the country’s economic and financial troubles. In the past several months, the Treasury Department has issued more short-term bills and fewer long-term notes than expected. Its machinations have lowered 10-year Treasury yields by nearly 1 percentage point, to about 4%. The Federal Reserve has gotten into the act, too. It pledged at its year-end press conference to deliver interest-rate cuts and other policy easing in the new year.

The immediate results include a melt-up in asset prices, a loosening of financial conditions, and higher and less stable prices. Hardworking Americans aren’t fooled. They see the country going down the wrong track. And they watch adversaries plotting to take advantage. Bad actors operating in the Black, Red and South China seas are undeterred. A foreign axis of resistance is unimpressed by the American economic engine, unintimidated by U.S. military might, and unconvinced Washington will rise to the geopolitical challenge. The axis seeks to divide our allies and, worse, to sow domestic discord. U.S. deterrence is flailing. American diplomats are being asked to carry too heavy a burden.

The relationship between the U.S. and the rest of the world is more fragile than it’s been in half a century. French statesman Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) feared that peace might be no more than the interlude between wars. If he’s right, current prosperity will serve as a fleeting interval between economic shocks.

A powerful economic and security commons, in George Shultz’s original framing, was established in 1945. After the devastation of the Great Depression and two world wars, the U.S. fortified its economy and strengthened alliances in a dangerous world. Americans benefited enormously from a surge in economic growth and heightened well-being for decades. America’s leaders made clear that empire-building wasn’t the goal. Rather it was to make the U.S. safer and stronger by supporting allies who supported us.

American peace and prosperity grew shaky in the late 1970s. Economic malaise and runaway inflation, institutional dysfunction and cultural decay, and a weakened military posture caused Americans to lose faith in their country’s prospects. U.S. allies no longer trusted us, and adversaries scarcely feared us. Failed efforts to rescue American hostages held by the mullahs in Iran was illustrative. America’s hegemony risked eclipse.

Ronald Reagan changed all that. He vanquished the Soviet Union and debilitated its proxies. His administration rebuilt an economic and security commons suited to the times. With a bolstered military, the U.S. held close to its allies and deterred its adversaries, occasionally with force. Strong, noninflationary growth and higher standards of living became the norm. The peace dividend wasn’t only prosperity. It was peace, and it lasted for two decades.

The 21st century has brought new challenges: terrorist attacks on the homeland, wars in the Middle East, a financial crisis and a global pandemic. The American economy swings between booms and busts. People have lost faith in institutions. Moral confusion clouds debates about the nation’s history. Finally, a big runup in prices has harmed the least well-off. It’s surprising that populism isn’t more popular.

America’s leaders ought to build a new economic and security commons. The U.S. should act as a sturdy point in a turbulent world. Strong, unapologetic national-security policy begins with a prosperous, sustainable economy. The U.S. must demonstrate again the superiority of its economic system. Washington’s conduct of fiscal, monetary, regulatory and trade policy needs fixing so soft power can share the burden with hard power.

Outspending the nation’s capacity is dangerous. Absent a fiscal anchor, the list of buyers retreating from America’s debt markets won’t be limited to those who wish us trouble.

Monetary policy requires a revamped framework, too. Inflation isn’t caused by workers earning too much and living too well. It’s caused by the government living too well—spending, printing and borrowing too much.

Government-directed industrial policy, as currently practiced, is akin to the command-and-control dictates of foreign regimes. Better for the private sector to out-innovate, outgrow and outsmart the competition. Regulators should take heed of U.S. comparative advantages—including in the energy sector—and better respect the separation between the private sector and the government.

China is actively courting many U.S. trading partners, promising privileged access in exchange for allegiance to Beijing. A revamped economic and security commons should be at least as clear and formidable as sanctions policy with adversaries. Put plainly, if a country acts as a trusted security partner of the U.S. and treats American businesses and citizens as it treats its own, the U.S. will act reciprocally. If, however, foreign countries disfavor U.S. interests, they won’t gain the precious benefit of American protection or ready access to U.S. technology or markets. I prefer a new paradigm to bring allies and partners into closer collaboration. Adversaries would take notice, not comfort.

Neither peace nor prosperity are self-reinforcing. The U.S. margin for error is small. Establishing a new security and economic commons may be difficult, but it’s necessary and pressing.

Mr. Warsh, a former member of the Federal Reserve Board, is a distinguished visiting fellow in economics at the Hoover Institution.

[Crafty_Dog]

I found this post by YA in the India thread very interesting and so paste it here:

=============================

I was impressed with the understanding of India by Alexander Dugin, a Russian thinker close to Putin. His understanding of things is very close to that of the Indian mind. Have not seen any other Western commentator, and definitely no American commentator with this level of accuracy. Dugin by the way says Russia should side with China!, which may be the correct response for Russia.

https://twitter.com/Agdchan/status/1781435242865123423

India Aims to Emulate Chinese Strategy

To the surprise of many, India currently boasts the fastest-growing economy in the world. In 2023, the country’s GDP grew by 8.4%. By 2027, it is projected to become the third-largest economy globally. If this trend continues, India might surpass the USA and even China in the 2030s.

India is also leading in demographics and the IT sector. The Indian diaspora now controls a significant segment of Silicon Valley, and the UK’s prime minister is Rishi Sunak, who is ethnically Indian, albeit with liberal-globalist views. Interestingly, a prominent conservative politician in the Republican Party, a staunch Trump supporter of Indian origin, Vivek Ramaswamy, represents a complete ideological antithesis to Sunak. In any case, Indians are advancing.

We are witnessing an entirely new phenomenon — the emergence of a new global centre right before our eyes. India owes these successes largely to a new turn in policy that coincided with the rise to power of the conservative Bharatiya Janata Party. Indeed, modern India was founded during decolonisation by a different party, the left-leaning and progressive Indian National Congress. Of course, the highest value for Indians after gaining independence was liberation from the impacts of colonialism, yet India remained a member of the post-colonial Commonwealth of Nations, where Britain dominated, and clung firmly to the democracy introduced by the British. Moreover, it even took pride in being ‘the largest democracy in the world’. The Congress was content that the country had achieved political independence from its former rulers but agreed to emulate the socio-political, economic, and cultural paradigm of the West.

For the first time, the Congress’s monopoly on power in India was challenged by the victory of an alternative right-conservative party — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — in the 1996 elections for the lower house of parliament (Lok Sabha). This party was founded based on the extremely conservative movement Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in 1980.

In 2014, Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister from this party and has held the position ever since. According to analysts, Modi has every reason to retain his post following the 2024 elections, which commence on 19 April and conclude on 1 June.

The rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Modi’s personal political charisma have fundamentally changed India. Interestingly, the official name of India under Modi was changed to its Sanskrit version — Bharat. This reflects that Modi relies on a completely different ideology than that of the Indian National Congress.

Initially, in the Indian struggle for independence from the British, there were two main approaches: one was gentle and pacifist, embodied by Mahatma Gandhi, who advocated non-violent resistance; the other was more militant and uncompromising, represented by figures such as the Indian traditionalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the founder of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Keshav Hedgewar, and the nationalist Vinayak Savarkar.

As the British departed from the country, they comfortably entrusted power in India to the Congress (having previously severed several territories populated by Muslims — Pakistan and Bangladesh — as well as Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Nepal), believing that this party would keep India within the Anglo-Saxon sphere of influence and lead it along the path of modernisation and Westernisation (with regional specifics), thereby maintaining some form of colonial control.

In contrast, the main opponents of the Congress had believed from the very start of the struggle for independence that India was not just a country or a former colony but the territory of a mighty and distinct civilisation. Today, we refer to this concept as a ‘civilisation-state’. This idea was first articulated by Kanaiyalal Munshi and came to be known as Akhand Bharat, ‘Undivided India’, or ‘Greater India’.

In 2022, Narendra Modi declared the main goal to be the ‘decolonisation of the Indian mind’. Before us emerges an India we hardly knew — a right conservative India, a Vedic civilisation-state, and a Greater India on the path to total sovereignty.

Certainly, a superficial observer might notice a contradiction: India is geopolitically aligning more with the United States and Israel, becoming involved in an escalating border conflict with China (hence India’s participation in several regional anti-China blocs such as the QUAD), and relations are intensifying with the Islamic world — both within India and towards Pakistan. If Indian traditionalists are concerned with the ‘decolonisation of the Indian mind’ and combating Western material civilisation, what do they have in common with the US?

To resolve this ambiguity, one might look to the history of modern China’s rise. Representatives of the American Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), especially Henry Kissinger in the late 1970s, proposed a bilateral partnership to China against the USSR, aiming to ultimately dismantle the socialist bloc. China, under Deng Xiaoping, capitalised on this and gradually transformed over forty years from an economic client of the US into a powerful independent pole, with which the US is now competing and, essentially, engaged in a trade war. The escalating issues surrounding Taiwan suggest that this confrontation might soon enter a hot phase.

Now, the same globalist forces in the West have decided to support India — this time against China. Modi, considering the Chinese experience, has adopted this strategy. But just as China used globalisation for its purposes, strengthening rather than losing its sovereignty, so too does Greater India intend to act. Initially, considering the objective realities of international politics, to strengthen its power, raise the welfare of its vast population, expand domestic market volumes, military might, and technological potential, and then, at the opportune moment, emerge as a fully independent and sovereign pole.

The globalists understand this strategy best. For instance, George Soros and his Open Society Foundations — which is banned in the Russian Federation and openly aims to combat tradition, sovereignty, and independent cultures and societies — have declared war on Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party. In doing so, Soros not only supported the opposition Congress but also actively fomented social and ethnic strife in India, specifically calling for the Dalits (a widely prevalent caste of untouchables) to rise up against Modi. This represents another version of the ‘colour revolution’ that the globalists are orchestrating.

Russia needs to recognise the fundamental changes occurring in India. This is a completely different country from the one with which we had quite close relations during the Soviet period. Yes, Indians still regard Russians with great fondness and nostalgia. This applies not only to the leftists in the Congress (where, incidentally, under the influence of Soros, voices of Russophobia are becoming increasingly loud) but also to the right-wing traditionalists. In this case, the key factor is not inertia but a clear understanding that Russia itself declares itself as a civilisation-state, is a major force in building a multipolar world, and is also currently undergoing its own kind of ‘decolonisation of consciousness’. If India has certain conflictual issues — especially in border areas — with China, another civilisation-state and another pole of the multipolar world, nothing similar exists with Russia, even in the long term.

That said, we absolutely should not be moving closer to India by sacrificing our close strategic partnership with China. On the contrary, we are vitally interested in settling relations between these two great powers because if conflict breaks out between them (as the West is indeed pushing for), the prospects for a multipolar world will be indefinitely delayed. Russia is now defending its traditional values. Thus, we should better understand all those who are standing up to defend their own.

Then the energy partnership, strategic plans for the North-South transport corridor, processes of Eurasian integration, cooperation in high technology (with India currently being one of the global leaders in IT), and the financial sector will acquire a new ideological dimension: traditionalists, interested in civilisational sovereignty and in stopping the expansion of Western hegemony, will understand each other much better.

Translated by Constantin von Hoffmeister

===================

*India as a civilization state
*China
*Globalism (George Soros and Open Society Foundations openly aim to combat tradition, sovereignty, and independent cultures and societies)
*Russia Russia itself declares itself as a civilisation-state, is a major force in building a multipolar world,

[Crafty_Dog]

Obviously, this is a pimple on an elephant's ass in the big picture of things, but it so clearly illustrates the cross civilization cultural issues described in the Russian piece that YA posted:

https://dailycaller.com/2024/04/22/biden-admin-trans-india-state/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rundown&pnespid=r_V6CiBdMvMT1_Pd_znqHc_DshCnUZgvcOjj37JspxZmJbcbehDzc1okH6Zcsd9Plv0EnXFT

[Crafty_Dog]

April 24, 2024
View On Website
Open as PDF

European Views on US Global Posture
Perceptions aren't consistent with reality.
By: Antonia Colibasanu

The notion that all countries operate within constraints is one of the main pillars of geopolitics. It came up repeatedly during my recent visit to the United States, where I attended several talks on European and Russian affairs. Though we at GPF try to stay out of the D.C. bubble, it’s nonetheless important for us to know what those in the bubble are saying, especially since Europe right now appears so consumed by what’s happening in Washington.

I traveled to the U.S. with a delegation of experts and policymakers from Romania. Analysts and officials from other parts of Europe, including Germany and Poland, were also in attendance. The main topics on the agenda were security and, of course, Ukraine. The event coincided with heated discussions in the U.S. Congress over aid packages for Ukraine and Israel. Though the situation in Israel is potentially hugely impactful for American politics, the conflict in Ukraine is the main focus for many policymakers in Europe. After all, the war there has shifted NATO’s containment line and transformed Eastern Europe into a literal battleground.

Considering that Kyiv is hugely dependent on military aid from Washington, European lawmakers are making concerted efforts to learn more about the constraints within which U.S. politics and politicians operate. Europeans typically have a narrow view of U.S. politics, mainly focusing on the presidency and the administration, which they perceive as ultimately responsible for maintaining the United States’ global leadership role and, by extension, the Western security structure.

That’s because the Europeans tend to believe the U.S. political system mirrors those in Europe, where foreign policies are forged by governments and primarily driven by urgent security threats to their borders. The Europeans thus get either nervous or excited every time another U.S. presidential election comes around, believing that a change in the presidency could alter how Washington interacts with the world. In doing so, they misjudge the way U.S. politics works, believing falsely that the presidency overrides every other institution in the United States, especially when it comes to strategy and foreign policy.

In fact, the U.S. president isn’t as powerful as many assume – and that’s by design. The nation's founders didn’t want to assign too much authority to one person in the political hierarchy. They instead built a system of checks and balances, splitting power among three branches of government: the legislative (Congress), the executive (the president) and the judiciary (the courts). This division of powers guarantees that no branch can overpower the others. Congress enacts legislation, which the president can veto, which Congress can in turn override with two-thirds majorities in both houses. Congress also controls the federal budget, and thus can limit funding for the president’s agenda. The president is commander-in-chief of the military but cannot declare war; that power belongs to Congress. The president also appoints federal judges and other officials, but the Senate must confirm the appointments. The courts, meanwhile, interpret laws and can strike down legislation that they rule unconstitutional. All this means that a president’s powers are limited by the legislative and judicial branches of government – even if his party holds a majority in Congress.

The president thus has a limited ability to wield power over U.S. foreign policy. Moreover, the United States’ global posture isn’t a product of its politics or policymaking to begin with. America's evolution as the leader of the Western world was largely driven by economic interests and the idea that global markets, mobility and interconnectivity would bring profit to U.S. businesses and drive economic growth and development. The role of the private sector – sometimes in coordination with the government – is central to the country’s global standing. Though interactions between companies and politicians are complex, one of the ways in which businesses influence foreign policy is by lobbying representatives in Congress to pursue policies that meet their interests abroad. This pressure resulted in legislation that made it possible for administrations to implement strategies that, over time, turned the U.S. into an economic leader and superpower. This role enabled the government to maintain domestic stability and pursue growth.

Still, the United States’ approach on Ukraine is often perceived in Europe as a reflection of the administration’s global priorities. During my visit to Washington, Congress was discussing a new Ukraine aid package, which was finally passed on Saturday. Many of the Europeans present at the talks tied the matter to America's leadership role in the world. To many Americans, however, aid for Ukraine is treated more as a matter of domestic politics than foreign affairs. Recent polls indicate Americans are equally split between thinking the U.S. is doing too much for Ukraine and wanting the U.S. to do more.

Another topic of discussion was the security situation around the Black Sea. In 2022, a bill was introduced in Congress that would authorize the National Security Council to direct an interagency strategy to increase coordination with NATO and the European Union, deepen economic ties, and strengthen the security and democratic resilience of partners in the Black Sea region in accordance with U.S. values and interests. The bill was passed in 2023 and has become of increasing interest to the business community in both the U.S. and the Black Sea region.

Western businesses increasingly see opportunities here, especially with the Ukraine war and sanctions on Russia disrupting more traditional routes through which they conduct trade around the world. The Danube has become an alternate trade route linking the so-called Middle Corridor (which connects Southeast Asia to Europe through Central Asia and Turkey instead of Russia) to Germany’s North Sea coast. New rail and road projects linking Romania’s port of Constanta to Gdansk in Poland also have been discussed to help integrate European markets and build a strong containment line in Eastern Europe.

The future of these and other infrastructure projects will depend on how states and businesses address the fallout of the war, its duration and the strategies of both Russia and Ukraine for rebuilding after its conclusion. Any investment plans in Ukraine will need to take into account Russia’s long-term strategy, announced in 2023, to counter Western influence around the world. Thus, the Black Sea region can’t be decoupled from the future of Ukraine – as some suggested during my trip to Washington. Should Ukraine be forced to negotiate ceding parts of its territory to Russia, Kyiv could fall under Russian influence in the longer term – which wouldn’t require a massive investment from Moscow considering the socio-economic realities in Ukraine today. The biggest risk many grappled with was that Ukraine could become a failed state, a black hole between Europe and Russia that Moscow could eventually control.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WSUdVu75M0Y

[ccp]

Nixon on the Shah
and the Jewish liberals who were against him
Are they happier with present regimes?

More fodder for me to be fed up.

[Crafty_Dog]

Well, left out of that was discussion of Kissinger's machinations to enable the Shah to form and lead OPEC , , ,
(Working from memory here-- do I have this right?)

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3BvtjIrIw8

[DougMacG]

"An overwhelming majority of Americans support Israel in its war against Hamas over the militant group running the Gaza Strip, according to a new poll.

The Harvard CAPS-Harris survey shared with The Hill showed 80 percent of registered voters said they support Israel more in the war, while 20 percent said they support Hamas more."

https://thehill.com/policy/international/4629597-americans-israel-hamas-gaza-student-protests-poll/
-------------

[Doug]  As far as I know, Joe Biden has been a supporter of Israel his entire career. Yet he hedges on support of this operation, existential to Israel. How would we like it if some other power put constraints on our ability to fight our enemy in any of our conflicts, iraq, Afghanistan, even World War II?

Look at this politically since that's what President Biden is doing. 80% support Israel but the percentage that support this military operation is way smaller, a slight majority. Of the 20% that support hamas, let's assume all of them are Democrat or at least Left leaning.

That means 40 to 50% of the Democrat Party doesn't even support Israel to win, much less this military operation.

Politically, we look for 60/40 issues and keep finding 80/20 issues. Not to get off topic but 80% support some restriction on abortion and the Democratic party is pursuing no restrictions.  They obviously see this election as a base turnout election.

2.4% of the US is Jewish. 70% of those are Democrat. In rough numbers, 4% of Biden's base is Jewish. In a close election that is also a group he cannot afford to lose,

I wouldn't want to be Joe Biden right now or his advisors, deciding life and death and strategic policies based on which way the political winds are blowing, absent principles or convictions.

The majority of ardent Israel supporters in this country I believe are white, Christian, conservative voters who won't vote for Biden under any circumstances either.

Democrats invented this political box they live in and it has worked for them to some degree so far. Now they have to live with it. Support Israel and live with the media lies about the civilian casualties, or come to the rescue of Hamas and leave the Middle East In perpetual war.

Impossible decision if you have no backbone.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Scylla-and-Charybdis

Some ancient history profs think this may be a mythic referall to the waters between Italy and Sicily.   IIRC these played a key role in denying the Spartacus uprising a move to Sicily.

[Crafty_Dog]

The ‘Uniparty’ Is Real—but It Isn’t What You Think
Democrats and Republicans aren’t overzealous about foreign intervention. They’re feckless about American leadership.
By Dalibor Rohac
May 19, 2024 3:43 pm ET


From Ralph Nader to Steve Bannon, self-styled populists and outsiders have disparaged Washington’s “uniparty.” When this critique turns to foreign policy, the uniparty is accused of groupthink and militarism—dragging the U.S. into unnecessary and endless wars while neglecting the concerns of regular Americans.

While the epithet is often overstated and used in bad faith, it contains a kernel of truth. Foreign-policy experts from both parties agree on a lot, and that consensus can lead to poor decisions. The wars in Gaza and Ukraine, as well as America’s geopolitical competition with China, expose a bipartisan problem of this sort that critics of U.S. foreign policy frequently miss.

Today’s uniparty isn’t defined by a zeal to export democracy and launch ill-advised wars against governments that don’t threaten us. Rather, it is defined, on both the Democratic and the Republican side, by a lack of initiative and an urge to do things on the cheap and halfheartedly, to manage crises instead of resolving them. It is also fundamentally dishonest, as it suggests that peace and security can be sustained without major sacrifices.

On Oct. 10, when it was perfectly clear that Israel could no longer tolerate living side by side with Hamas and that this terrorist organization would have to meet the same fate as ISIS, President Biden promised that he would “make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself and respond to this attack.” Today, when support for the Jewish state has become a political liability for Mr. Biden in Michigan, his support for Israel is wobbly at best.

Ukraine is a similar story. Ukrainians are fully aware that “for as long as it takes” means until the end of 2024, when a new supplemental appropriation bill will be necessary. And whatever assistance the Biden administration has provided has come with strings attached. The U.S. is denying important weapons systems to Kyiv or restricting its use of them.

The problem is bipartisan. As Israel divides Democrats, Ukraine divides Republicans. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s manifesto for the next Republican administration, admits as much, offering only the faint hope “that next conservative President” will seize “a generational opportunity to bring resolution to the foreign policy tensions within the movement.”

The list goes on. Unlike in the early 19th century, when the U.S. successfully defeated the Barbary pirates and their sponsors, freedom of navigation hasn’t been restored to the Red Sea, as Houthi rebels continue to control what is normally one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

Even on China, there are few signs that the sudden centrality of Beijing’s threat has been translated into effective action, or that it would be under a second Trump administration. As the China archhawk Elbridge Colby tweeted recently, “Americans are war-weary and more skeptical of military interventions. Taiwan matters a great deal to Americans. But it’s not existential and it’s remote to most.”

In short, as the world burns and new conflagrations loom, our uniparty pretends that business as usual is adequate—or, worse yet, that ignoring the world will somehow enable us to address problems at home. It is an illusion. If you’re concerned about the southern border, our asylum system being overrun, or about the fentanyl crisis, you have to care about the political stability and security of America’s neighbors to the south—a subject on which both political parties remain largely silent.

The U.S. needs to adjust to a more dangerous world. It is past time to prioritize hard power over other areas of government spending—in other words, more guns and less butter—and plug the holes left by decades of enjoying the “peace dividend.” Yet keeping the existing entitlement schemes intact even as they head for bankruptcy remains a central tenet of America’s uniparty—a rare point of domestic bipartisan consensus in a polarized time.

As the eras of World War II and the Cold War illustrate, the U.S. can lead the world. That requires political leadership capable of defeating the complacent, feckless, and shortsighted uniparty.

Mr. Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

[DougMacG]

A few interesting points in this. 
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/remembering-memorial-day-we-must-avoid-world-war-iii-211175
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[Doug] The article is about avoiding another world war today.  The passage below has to do with lessons from history.  I have asked on these pages and in discussions, what were the lessons of WWII?

My first answer (unfortunately) is intervene (against evil) earlier.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From the article:
"As Churchill wrote subsequently in his history The Gathering Storm, “One day, President Roosevelt told me he was asking publicly for the suggestions about what the war should be called. I said it was ‘the Unnecessary War.’” Churchill then goes on to explain that “There never was a war more easy to stop than that which just wrecked what was left of the world form the previous struggle.” Had they only listened: when Hitler violated the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty and remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936, Churchill called for Britain and France to send troops to enforce the peace. Had they done so, the German general staff would very likely have ousted Hitler, and World War II would never have happened."

[Doug]  (Churchill was not elected Prime Minister until 1940.)

How does this apply today to US China policy regarding South China Sea and the impending, threatened invasion of Taiwan?

[Crafty_Dog]

ProRussian blogger:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/ruling-class-finally-awakens-to-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1351274&post_id=145853907&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=z2120&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email



https://www.foreignraffairs.com/united-states/biden-foreign-policy-world-rhodes

[Crafty_Dog]

https://themostimportantnews.com/archives/10-signs-that-global-war-is-rapidly-approaching

[Crafty_Dog]

Don’t enlarge NATO

Members need to have military capability, strategic value to alliance

By Jed Babbin

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization — NATO — began in 1949 with 12 members. In 10 rounds of expansion, many of the former Warsaw Pact nations have joined to benefit from the NATO Treaty’s Article 5, which pledges that each member nation will defend every other. In 10 rounds of expansion, NATO has enlarged itself to 32 members, including Sweden and Norway, which joined this year. Other nations — Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukraine and Georgia — are all aspiring to NATO membership.

As the NATO website points out, a 1995 study on new membership concludes that any nation that meets five criteria should be able to join. Those criteria are (1) the nation has a democratic political system based on a market economy, (2) it treats minority populations fairly, (3) it is committed to the peaceful resolution of conflicts, (4) it is able and willing to make military contributions to NATO operations and (5) it is committed to democratic civil-military relations and institutional structures.

Those criteria have been violated by the admission of certain members. Montenegro, for example, has — for those who remember “The Mouse That Roared” — the military capabilities of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.

In its 2008 Bucharest Summit, NATO agreed that Georgia and Ukraine would become NATO members. As this column has also pointed out, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg unwisely said a few months ago that NATO was trying to agree on an irreversible path to membership for Ukraine. Former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who will succeed Mr. Stoltenberg as secretary general in October, should reverse that position and bring about a more rational approach to new nations’ membership.

The most critical questions must be: What does the prospective member bring to the fight, and what is its strategic value?

Mr. Rutte’s reputation is that of a man who can generate consensus, which will be as difficult in NATO as it is in the European Union. He has supported former President Donald Trump’s demand that the NATO members spend more on their own defense.

Mr. Trump’s demands have been effective. In 2024, 18 of NATO’s 32 members will spend the agreed-on 2% of their gross domestic product on defense. One of the worst laggards is Canada, which — under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — will spend only about 1.4%.

The genesis of NATO was the threat to Western Europe by the former Soviet Union. Russia, without its former empire, is still a significant danger to the NATO nations. Both Georgia and Ukraine border Russia. In the case of Ukraine, Russia’s 2014 invasion and subsequent annexation of its Crimean Peninsula, coupled with its 2022 invasion, brought war to Europe in a magnitude unseen since the Second World War.

Obviously, Ukraine cannot become a NATO member while that war goes on. It will probably continue — despite any interim peace agreement — as long as Russian President Vladimir Putin is alive.

Mr. Putin has hinted that, like Kaiser Wilhelm did of Germany before World War I, he believes Western nations are trying to surround Russia to deny its rightful place in the world. The addition of either Ukraine or Georgia would heighten Mr. Putin’s anxiety.

The only answer to the NATO membership issue is to stop NATO’s expansion at this point. There is no pressing need for nations such as Georgia or Ukraine to become members. That doesn’t mean NATO’s expansion should stop entirely. Why shouldn’t Israel, Japan or Australia be members? Each has considerable military capabilities from which NATO would benefit. Each is strategically placed and — in the cases of Australia and Japan — could mean a strategic deterrent to China. In the case of Israel, NATO membership would be a clear deterrent to Iran. The reason, unfortunately, is simple. The European members of NATO and Canada have neither the political will nor the military capability to defend any nation in the Pacific. In the case of Israel, they have an antipathy that has grown from the war with Hamas that has assumed an enormous ideological importance that Europe will not soon overcome. What would Mr. Trump do to (or with) NATO if he is reelected in November? Rumors abound that he would take radical action, perhaps keeping the NATO nations under the U.S. nuclear umbrella but taking U.S. troops out of Europe. Whatever he does, he should lead NATO into the future while still encouraging the laggards to spend more on defense. Any new member nation should have more military capability than Montenegro and more strategic value.

NATO was and can be again, a cornerstone of our deterrent strategy if it is led properly, which President Biden hasn’t done.

Under Mr. Biden, American deterrence has become ineffective. U.S. military spending is enormous, but much of the defense budget is being spent on the wrong things, which will be discussed in a future column. The ineffectiveness of our deterrence is best exemplified by the Houthis of Yemen, who — despite Mr. Biden’s efforts — are still attacking shipping in the Red Sea.

Deterrence is measured by the ability and willingness to use force for defense. We need to do a lot better, and NATO could be one good way to do so.

Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and contributing editor for The American Spectator

[Crafty_Dog]

House Speaker Mike Johnson said the House will vote on a series of bills “to empower the next administration to hit our enemies economies on Day One.” The legislation will combat what he called a “China-led axis” of nations intent on destroying America. ASSOCIATED PRESS

FOREIGN POLICY

Johnson preparing legislation to combat ‘China-led axis’

BY RYAN LOVELACE THE WASHINGTON TIMES

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday he wants to pass major legislation before the year’s end to combat what he called a “China-led axis” of nations intent on destroying America.

Mr. Johnson told the Hudson Institute that interconnected threats facing America are being orchestrated by China, and he made the case for a “new policy of peace through strength for the 21st century” epitomized by former President Donald Trump.

“I refer to it as a ‘China-led axis’ composed of partner regimes in Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and even Cuba,” the Louisiana Republican said in one of his first major statements on foreign policy. “Now they each have their own cultures, their own specific sinister aims, but they all wake up every morning thinking how they can take down America.”

“They are increasingly using their collective military, technological, and financial resources to empower one another in their various efforts to cut off our trade routes and steal our technology and harm our troops and upend our economy,” he told the think tank briefing.

As a result, Mr. Johnson said, the Congress must work to counter China with every tool at its disposal.

“The House will be voting on a series of bills to empower the next administration to hit our enemies’ economies on Day One,” Mr. Johnson said. “We will build our sanctions package, punish the Chinese military firms that provide material support to Russia and Iran, and we’ll consider options to restrict outbound investments in China.”

Mr. Johnson said votes on such legislative priorities would begin this fall, with a goal of passing a legislative package before 2025.

“Our goal is to have a significant package of China-related legislation signed into law by the end of this year, in this Congress, featuring these priorities and many more and we’ll work aggressively toward that package,” he said. “I’m very hopeful that much of this can be bipartisan.”

The House Republican leader championed Mr. Trump’s foreign policy record and the Republican Party’s agenda for foreign affairs in the years to come. Mr. Johnson praised Mr. Trump for calling out Russia and China, enforcing oil sanctions on Iran, and brokering the Abraham Accords establishing diplomatic ties between Israel and several once-hostile Arab nations.

“The Republican Party is not one of nation-builders or careless interventionists, we don’t believe we should be the world’s policemen, nor are we idealists who think we can placate tyrants,” Mr. Johnson said. “We are realists: ... We have to be prepared to fight and if we must fight, we fight with the gloves off.”

Mr. Johnson’s pitch for a muscular foreign policy is music to the ears of many at the Hudson Institute, which is now home to Mr. Trump’s rival for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, Nikki Haley, and former Rep. Mike Gallagher, who led the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party before exiting Congress this year.

The speaker said the work of the House’s CCP committee, established shortly after Republicans regained control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections, would not stop when the year ends, noting, “Beijing is our No. 1 foreign threat.”

He also pitched a vision for a new foreign policy built on a coalition big enough for Mr. Trump’s “America First” supporters and Ms. Haley’s more internationalist backers.

“We need a U.S.-led, America First coalition that advances the security interests of Americans and engages abroad with the interests of working families and businesses here at home,” Mr. Johnson said, “a coalition that’s good for everybody.”

[Crafty_Dog]

This post from the Death of NATO thread raises interesting questions.

Off the top of my head I'm not sure that I agree.

We are confronting the Chinese-Russian-Iran-North Korea-Venezuela-Cuban Axis.   Why wouldn't we want Europe/NATO as part of our team?  Or do we let them sell rope to the Chinese so that they are the last to be hanged as the West goes down?
=================================


This sort of scope expansion appears consistent with other globalist goals:

Imperial NATO is On The Way
But it is unlikely to reach its goals


STEPHEN BRYEN AND SHOSHANA BRYEN
JUL 10, 2024
NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  The name should have been changed long ago, when NATO shifted its focus and operations south and eastward. NATO is shifting once again, most seriously by expanding its membership without any serous planning about how to secure its new flanks.

Outgoing NATO Chief  Jens Stoltenberg said last month that China should face consequences for its support of Russia. He wasn’t specific. "It's too early for me to say exactly… My message is that is… it's not sustainable and viable that China continues to fuel the biggest security threats ... for NATO allies, especially in Europe."

Thanks for reading Weapons and Strategy! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.


Subscribe
Adding China, even theoretically, to the concerns of the Atlantic Alliance is a very big step and it widens the list of countries looking for NATO protection.

The limited good news at the NATO Summit is that the alliance actually recognizes its weakness.  The plan is to increase budgets and significantly enlarge the number of troops that can be committed if NATO goes to war.

According to the internal plan, NATO must grow its deployed or deployable troop strength by 35 to 50 brigades.  The NATO leadership will need to convince its members to enlarge their armies, equip them, and have the transport and supply capability to support them in the field.

The US also has around 100,000 troops in Europe, with around 20,000 helping shore up NATO’s battlegroups.  NATO’s troop expansion is on top of the US troop presence.

A brigade in NATO is 3-5,000 troops, meaning that NATO could be short up to 250,000 troops in total.  Raising and training a large number of soldiers in NATO countries is a challenging task; it may also be impossible.

In most of Europe and in the United States, military recruiting is well below where it should be. In the US, only the Marine Corps and Space Command met their recruiting goals – the Army, Navy and Air Force fell short. The British and Germans missed their targets by wide margins.

Germany, which could again become a front line target if there is a war in Europe, has an army of 184,000 military personnel and 80,000 civilian personnel made up of Professional soldiers (57,365), Contract soldiers (114,243) and Voluntary military personnel (9,748); there is no conscription. Very recently, the proposed German defense budget was reduced by 5 billion Euros.  For Germany to comply with NATO's plan it would have to quadruple its defense budget and impose conscription.

Fat chance.

At present NATO does not have brigades – it has battlegroups, each of which has about 1,000 soldiers. There are presently 8 battlegroups and NATO is trying to add 4 more. This means is that in addition to creating 35 to 50 new brigades, it would also have to enlarge its 8 battlegroups into brigades. So far at least, there is no agreement on how to do so.

At the NATO Summit, new commitments have been made to shore up Ukraine by offering four new Patriot air defense batteries and additional F-16s (six of them) from Norway. Some NATO members are now also talking about shipping “squadrons” of F-16s to Ukraine, but that may be propaganda. (There is a good chance the US will end up paying for the Patriots.) The reason is straightforward: NATO knows that its grandiose enlargement plans are not going to happen, so it needs Ukraine as a buffer to Russia.  As long as Russia is tied down, NATO can avoid exposure of its shortcomings.

In the Pacific

While NATO is floating plans for enlargement of its membership and its capabilities, and putting China on notice about its own behavior, democratic friends in the Pacific are looking for a NATO umbrella.

Australia is attending the Summit, wanting to take advantage of NATO military know-how.  New Zealand, which wants to encourage the US as the leading NATO member, to protect it from China, has sent its Prime Minister to the meeting.   

Japan’s Prime Minister and South Korea’s President are there, apparently buying into NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg's vision that NATO must confront both Russia and China.  Japan has longstanding, unresolved issues over the Northern Territories (the Kuril Islands), occupied by the USSR at the end of World War II.   But the bigger problem is China, which Japan fears will soon take over the Pacific First Island Chain after "solving" the Taiwan issue; Taiwan sits right in the center of the chain. China has territorial claims on Japanese-administered islands, essentially the Senkaku Islands – which China calls the Diaoyu Islands. China also claims Okinawa, which is militarily important to the United States.

The US and Japan and the US and Korea have defense treaties (the 1960 Japan-US treaty was recently updated).  The US maintains a significant presence in both countries. In Japan there are 54,000 US military personnel and another 8,000 contractors (plus another 25,000 Japanese workers). The US home ports a nuclear aircraft carrier in Japan and maintains a significant air force and naval presence. In Korea, the US has 28,500 troops, primarily Army, stationed mostly at Camp Humphreys.  The US also maintains strategic missile defenses in Korea.

South Korea has mandatory military service for all males starting at the age of 18, producing a large army with 500,000 active troops and 3,100,000 reservists.  Its primary adversary, North Korea, has an even larger active army, now numbering 1,320,000 active troops and a reserve of 560,000.  Unlike North Korea, which has nuclear weapons, South Korea relies on the American "nuclear umbrella" for protection from its northern neighbor.

Japan, however, does not have conscription and has missed its Self Defense Force recruiting goal by more than 50%.  Young people in Japan today can get good jobs that pay well.  The Self Defense Force pays poorly and is unattractive as a career choice.

Who Benefits?

What would Japan or South Korea gain from a relationship with NATO – if not membership?  It is hard to see how NATO could be of any real help to either and it could complicate the US-Japanese and US-South Korean relationships by adding another command complex standing between them and their American sponsor.

Likewise, it is worth asking, what would NATO gain from a relationship with major US clients in Asia?  NATO does not have any power projection capability with respect to Asia.  There is not much that NATO can put on the table of any real interest to either Japan or Korea, other than politics.

In fact, it can be argued that many European “prestige” projects have squandered sensible efforts to strengthen conventional land, air, and naval forces.

Political Headwinds

NATO also faces some significant political headwinds.

One is from former President Donald Trump.  As president, Trump loudly demanded that the NATO partners increase their defense spending. While the US was spending 3.57 percent in 2018, only eight of the 29 allies at the time were spending the NATO goal of 2 percent. Some of the allies moved forward, some did not. Perhaps more worrisome, former Trump aides have suggested that Ukraine is a European problem, not an American one.  Stories that NATO wants to "Trump-proof" itself are all around, as European politicians fear that Trump won't favor a continuous war with Russia.

What is clear is that Trump's instinct is to negotiate with Russia, something Europe, aside from Hungary, rejects unequivocally.

There also are serious and unavoidable economic issues.  Should French President Emmanuel Macron make concessions to the left,  it will be painful.  The left wants a 90% "wealth tax" and far greater social spending. (“Wealth” is already leaving France.)  France cannot do that and still put billions into Ukraine.  Current arsenals are badly depleted, so real funding for the future will have to come out of current operating budgets.  The consequences are an economic death spiral for France; one that could be repeated in the UK with its new Labor government.

NATO's Imperial Plans are mostly smoke, and if Asian countries have common sense, they will not tie themselves to NATO.

Stephen D. Bryen is a former US Defense Department official; Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center.

https://weapons.substack.com/p/imperial-nato-is-on-the-way?r=1qo1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

[ccp]

the authors of the article:

"What would Japan or South Korea gain from a relationship with NATO – if not membership?  It is hard to see how NATO could be of any real help to either and it could complicate the US-Japanese and US-South Korean relationships by adding another command complex standing between them and their American sponsor."

AND

"NATO's Imperial Plans are mostly smoke, and if Asian countries have common sense, they will not tie themselves to NATO."

CD asks:

"We are confronting the Chinese-Russian-Iran-North Korea-Venezuela-Cuban Axis.   Why wouldn't we want Europe/NATO as part of our team?  Or do we let them sell rope to the Chinese so that they are the last to be hanged as the West goes down?"

Me:

Not clear to me what the author's rationale is other then NATO can't/won't even maintain their military preparedness in Europe let alone be able to do anything in Asia.

And the authors this:

"NATO also faces some significant political headwinds.

One is from former President Donald Trump.  As president, Trump loudly demanded that the NATO partners increase their defense spending. While the US was spending 3.57 percent in 2018, only eight of the 29 allies at the time were spending the NATO goal of 2 percent. Some of the allies moved forward, some did not. Perhaps more worrisome, former Trump aides have suggested that Ukraine is a European problem, not an American one.  Stories that NATO wants to "Trump-proof" itself are all around, as European politicians fear that Trump won't favor a continuous war with Russia.

What is clear is that Trump's instinct is to negotiate with Russia, something Europe, aside from Hungary, rejects unequivocally."


Trump is right.   Give Russia the damn donbas and few more acres then shore up defense of Europe.

in my humble opinion.

We ARE footing too much of the bill in cash and arms.   We already bailed out Europe twice.

[Crafty_Dog]

Pro-Russian, anti-Semitic, and smart:

===============================

Subscriber Mailbag - Answers (7/28/24)
SIMPLICIUS
JUL 29

 




READ IN APP
 
Welcome back to the answers portion of the Mailbag. Here are our top 5 winning questions with the most votes which I will answer as thoroughly as possible.

Let’s dig right into them.

1.
(97 votes)

What do you think is the endgame for Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, and other nations in the immediate area?

It’s an interesting question given current developments, which this recent thread by Pawel Wargan gives very fascinating insight into. In light of all ongoing events, most people naturally defer to the most basic and well-trodden theories about geopolitical origins: for instance, that the U.S. wants to retain imperial hegemony over Europe, and has seeded it with GLADIO-style structures bent on doing that.

But one less-examined aspect, which is increasingly playing a bigger role, is that of the Polish involvement. This is particularly important now since, as of this writing, a new report has been sending Twitter into a stir which states that Poland has now surpassed France as the third largest NATO force, behind the U.S. and Turkey:



It is in light of this that we examine the earlier-mentioned thread which explains how one of the key overlooked factors driving the current geopolitical tides in Europe is Pilsudski’s dream of the Intermarium, which was sublimated into the specter of Prometheism that, according to the author, continues to haunt Europe. For the unaware, a quick definition:

Prometheism or Prometheanism was a political project initiated by Józef Piłsudski, a principal statesman of the Second Polish Republic from 1918 to 1935. Its aim was to weaken the Russian Empire and its successor states, including the Soviet Union, by supporting nationalist independence movements among the major non-Russian peoples that lived within the borders of Russia and the Soviet Union

As you can see from the above, Prometheism very neatly overlaps with the CIA’s Operation Belladona, Operation Aerodynamic, etc., which sought to work with nationalist groups like OUN to counter Soviet influence and, essentially, create a breakaway state.

Pawel Wargan believes the Prometheists were involved and are resurging today behind the overlapping interests of subduing Russia once and for all:

“New Europe” became an important vehicle for containing these impulses. And their strategies — and the myriad institutions created to advance them — increasingly echoed those of the Prometheans from a century ago. In 2015, Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović and Polish President Andrzej Duda launched the Three Seas Initiative — the NATOfied brood of Piłsudski’s Intermarium. The Initiative would seek to shift trade across the Eurasian landmass from an East-West to a North-South axis, advancing the US objective of decoupling Europe from Russia and China — and securing a degree of political muscle for states slighted by the “two-tier Europe” agenda. At that time, Donald Trump — facing a cool reception in Western Europe — turned East for new partnerships. Endorsing the Three Seas Initiative in 2017, he said that the project would “transform and rebuild the entire region and ensure that your infrastructure, like your commitment to freedom and rule of law, binds you to all of Europe and, indeed, to the West.”

He concludes:

As the war in Ukraine escalated in February 2022, that transformation gained new strength. Emboldened by the US nuclear umbrella, and elevated politically within a fragmenting order that continues to disadvantage its peripheries, the Prometheans emerged as the lynchpins of a new, militarised, and subordinated Europe. In 2023, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki warned that Europe’s pursuit of strategic autonomy “means shooting into our own knee and making with China the same mistake as with Russia”. So here we begin to see why (certain) Eastern Europeans are so excited about a federated Europe that auspiciously excludes Russia — even while extending into Turkey and Azerbaijan. And we see why that story may be far from over. A Trump presidency will bring challenges to NATO that might see European strategic sovereignty reappear on the agenda. Will he turn to the New Prometheans to keep Europe in check once again?

It’s clear that Poland is seeing its chance amid a dying, deindustrializing Europe to take the reins of a new kind of leadership, replacing Germany as the geopolitical spearpoint. Massive new infrastructure is reportedly being built in Poland to support a future coming European war against Russia, though the same reportedly goes for other nations in the region like Romania.

By the way, as a quick aside, one point people miss is how Russia’s full victory over Ukraine could eventually allow some form of direct access to a friendly Hungary and even Serbia, the latter of which is currently totally locked out of receiving Russian military aid of any kind:


After all, it’s possible Hungary could leave NATO eventually; the Polish foreign ministry just stated this today:

The Polish Foreign Ministry proposed that Hungary leave the EU and NATO, - Polska Agencja Prasowa

Deputy head of the ministry Teofil Bartoszewski criticized Orban's Saturday statements.

“I don’t really understand why Hungary wants to remain a member of organizations that it doesn’t like so much and allegedly treats it badly. This is, of course, the anti-European, anti-Ukrainian, anti-Polish policy of Hungary.”

Ultimately, I see such developments creating a domino effect which causes more countries to increasingly join ‘Eastern Bloc’. The reason is, we are living in a sort of reverse Cold War, economically speaking. Back then, the West was economically strong, and countries who were pried away from the Iron Curtain began to see immediate economic benefits. Now it’s the opposite: anyone staying in the diseased EU is subjected to economic suicide via mass austerity, migration, intentionally economically damaging policies, etc. And anyone joining the Russian-Chinese bloc, immediately gets an economic boost and growth via real trade partners.

Thus, if Russia can open up this corridor, as above, more countries in the immediate vicinity will see the economic strength of the countries connected via the Russian bloc, and will begin having second thoughts about being EU-aligned. It will cause long-term cracks to form, with increasing political pressure to look East.

For the shorter term future though, it seems we’ll see increased desperation from the EU in trying to attack and isolate Hungary, as they’ve been doing, like with the recent stripping it its chairmanship for the next EU council:


Ultimately, everything will depend on how decisively Russia finishes with Ukraine. If Russia cannot defeat Ukraine in totality, and is forced into some kind of Khasavyurt Accords-style deal again, then it will vastly strengthen the EU position and its ability to continue dominating its army of vassal states. But if Ukraine completely collapses in a total Russian victory, we could see the precipitation of vast changes, such as a highly weakened EU brought to the point of panic and turmoil, which will have a lot of the secondary actors questioning their long-term commitments to the anti-Russian vector.

Additionally, upon such a victory, a trove of evidence will likely be uncovered to show Ukraine and the U.S.’ complicity in various acts like the Nord Stream attacks that will create further divisions. For the next 10 years or so, I foresee the EU autocracy continue to hang on by a thread, getting more desperate and despotic, using an increasingly heavy-hand to try and punish ‘uncooperatives’ like Hungary; but ultimately, it will all only weaken the EU even further as its countries descend into deeper economic and social turmoil.

But in the immediate future, I don’t see many drastic changes as the current course continues on for likely many more years.

2.
(74 votes)

From your last report, it seemed that the advantage Ukraine has in terms of AI (thanks to the US) is quite significant and it seems like it has been effective in stopping Russia in Kharkov. If it gets deployed on the entire Front, one could imagine the situation getting worse for Russia leading to eventual stalemate (or God forbid) defeat. What do you think the likelihood is and can you expand on how Russia can defeat AI (and AI powered drones no longer susceptible to EW)? What can Russia do to stop it and what are the chances it has a big effect on the entire front.

Corollary, what do you think is the likelihood of China providing Russia with its AI developments to "even out the field" so to speak?

Firstly, let me state for the record that I personally don’t think the AI ‘stopped Russia’ in Kharkov. In that report, I was merely relaying the thoughts of a couple other correspondents—but ultimately, they are just two voices in a sea of opinions; that’s not to mention the fact that they have a certain microcosmic view from their corner of the front that can be detrimentally limited in scope.

My personal opinion is that the Kharkov front has thus far accomplished its main goal, which was always to draw Ukrainian reserves away from the Donetsk region, where the real offensive would be launched. One can clearly see that this is working, as the past week has seen a torrent of Ukrainian reports about unprecedented breakthroughs happening everyday, particularly in the Toretsk and Ocheretino directions.

I do think Russia likely would have wanted to get a bit further in the Kharkov assault, no doubt. Unlike what some misinformed ‘analysts’ have claimed, Russia hardly intended to push hundreds of kilometers deep or even encircle Kharkov, after all, the provided force was no where near the size to indicate such a maneuver. But I do think Russian military planners likely would have wanted to at least capture Volchansk and the surrounding area, while instead they got bogged down halfway through Volchansk. But ultimately, I don’t think they had a real particular set of objectives like “capture X” or “get to point Y”. The only true objective was: creative as much of a disturbance as possible to draw Ukrainian reserves away from the real key fronts—and they did exactly that: all of Ukraine’s most elite units flooded to the north to repel the attack.

So, what I’m saying is, I don’t think your assertion is completely wrong, but that there’s a bit of truth in both. The AI stuff may have played a role in slowing things down a bit, but not as omnipotent a role as some seem to suggest, given Russia’s misinterpreted objectives there. Recall, the AFU itself admitted Russia utilized only ~30k forces for the breach—this is hardly enough to make the types of vast gains some suggest were intended.

It brings us to your next point. If the AI was so overpowering, then why hasn’t Ukraine already scaled it up to other fronts and used it to dominate Russian forces there? Why are the breakthroughs in the Donetsk direction still accelerating in pace? To play devil’s advocate, we can perhaps suppose that if the forces were equal, the AI could be the deciding factor, but it can’t make up for the vast overmatch in man and materiel on this front. After all, we must understand what the AI actually does: it speeds up identification and relaying of targets to be hit—but if you don’t have any weapons or ammo to hit those targets, then the AI can’t really do much for you anyway.

It may seem like I’m beating around the bush, but I was setting up the main point: which is that, as good as the AI might be, it has to be considered within the larger force disparities at play. None of us know for 100% certainty how much Ukraine might be overplaying or exaggerating its troop woes, but if the situation is as bad as it sounds, then AI may simply not be enough to overcome the lack of adequately trained troops needed to actually convert the AI’s intelligence into action.

Everything we hear states that Ukraine is losing more men than it recruits, and that the troop situation remains dire. While an AI advantage can give an asymmetrical edge that theoretically makes up for the troop disadvantage, it’s likely to be too little too late, particularly given that Russia is not exactly completely at zero in this regard—Russia too is increasingly using AI of all kinds, including the battlefield management variety, by all accounts.

Recall that in the very last report, I highlighted the head of Ukraine’s entire drone program’s statements which mostly downplayed Ukraine’s AI developments, and asserted that AI would not be some magic silver bullet against Russia.

But there are two main types of AI we are talking about here, the battlefield management variety, and the autonomous drone swarms which can seek targets even while suppressed by EW. To answer your question, while autonomous AI drones can operate in a jamming environment, they are not immune to everything—the future of microwave style electromagnetic weapons will be able to defeat them en masse by simply frying their electronics; it’s just that for now such systems remain heavy and expensive, and cannot be easily distributed all across the frontline. Many countries have already been working on such systems—from the UK:


https://www.yahoo.com/news/thor-microwave-anti-drone-system-190356910.html
But you can see how big and bulky it is, and the range isn’t great. For now it will remain for point defense, like guarding bases and C2 nodes, etc., but not really useful for assaults. Russia itself is testing various weapons—just a week ago I posted a photo of a burnt Ukrainian drone with the caption that some new Russian laser system which was being tested had taken it out.

Also, keep in mind that Russia has already been using AI-powered drones arguably even longer than Ukraine.


https://defence-blog.com/ukraine-raises-concerns-over-ai-powered-lancet-drone/
And this isn’t just the variety Ukraine has, which has to be manually guided to the vicinity of the target and ‘locked on’, after which the AI can independently continue driving the drone into the target. But in fact, the Russian Lancet has already long reportedly been operating under a much more fully autonomous version that even scans the entire battlefield on its own, or at least designated sector grids, which can be many kilometers in size. Western reports confirmed this development when they found specialized NVIDIA-sourced AI chips inside the latest Russian Lancets.


Another consideration: in the recent paid article I wrote about how certain insider sources have stated they believe that FPVs may lose relevance within the next 6 months to a year. Here is a French army general stating the same thing:



https://en.topwar.ru/245260-fpv-drony-skoro-poterjajut-aktualnost-po-krajnej-mere-tak-schitaet-francuzskaja-armija-argumenty-za-i-protiv.html
“According to the Chief of Staff of the French Army, Pierre Chille, FPV-drones will soon lose their dominant role on the battlefield. Now FPV drones carry out up to 80% of strikes during the Ukrainian conflict, but already this year at the Eurosatory-2024 exhibition dozens of systems for combating drones, both kinetic and electronic warfare. According to Schill, all French vehicles in two years will be equipped with anti-drone systems capable of hitting them with missiles or ammunition with a programmable detonation...”

As for China, I do think they’ll share their AI developments with Russia only because it’s of critical importance for China’s own national security to see what works and what doesn’t on the modern battlefield. China has a very brief window of this war to test their best stuff, to see what can work against NATO in a potential Taiwan fight. Thus, China would be crazy not to give Russia its best AI tricks to test and fine tune so that Chinese experts can gain invaluable experience from real world conditions. There are many indications of China covertly helping Russia already:


▪️In 2023, China exported $390 million worth of metalworking machines to the Russian Federation compared to $94 million a year earlier.

▪️According to Tufts University scientist and Russian Army expert P. Luzin, 90% of machine tools imported to Russia come from China. And those produced in Russia contain Chinese parts and engines.


Thus, I don’t think Ukraine’s AI “edge”—if it even has one—will ultimately turn the tide of the war, as there are simply too many other negative trend factors going against Ukraine for it to remain competitive in the future.

3.
(59 votes)

Very little is written about partisan activity by pro-Russian people in Ukraine or pro Ukraine people in Russia.

It is being reported that the cars of the people doing the forced recruiting in Odessa are being torched. Is this by Russian partisans or by Ukrainians themselves who do not want to be forcibly recruited.

What is known about partisan activity, and can this be used to find out who the people on the ground are supporting?

You’re right that there’s been a huge upsurge in this ‘partisan’ activity, as it’s being called, in Ukraine. Not only the cars of TSS mobilization officers, but more importantly, railway relay boxes are being torched—I think half a dozen or so of them just in the past couple weeks. This is helping to put major strains on Ukraine’s embattled railway system, which is already suffering from the de-electrification issues surrounding Ukraine’s energy grid. John Helmer just covered this in great detail a day ago.

Now they’re even trying to tie it into the wider ‘railway panic’ of Europe after multiple tracks were disabled in France:



As you said though, in Ukraine not much is written or known about the attacks, precisely, so we don’t actually know if it’s random partisans or Russian coordinated attacks. Most likely it’s a combination of both as it’s simple SOP of special services to organize these types of attacks on an enemy, so we know Russia is always actively working on this. On the other hand, we also know for definite that there has been a huge swell of organic dissatisfaction, protests, etc., against the mobilization campaign in Ukraine. We’ve seen dozens of videos now of various instances of unrest in the past few weeks, particularly ever since the new mobilization law was signed a while back. So it’s only prudent to assume there are cases of both.

But to be honest, far more is known about Ukraine’s efforts in Russia than the reverse, probably because Russian OPSEC has always been better. This is a consequence of Ukraine needing PR glory much more than Russia, and so Ukraine advertises its successes for victory points, while Russia does everything covertly and doesn’t care to fight the ‘propaganda war’ on Twitter.

But in recent times there has been a slew of Ukrainian “partisan” attacks in Russia—if you can call them that. Almost in every case they are the same: Ukrainian intelligence services contact a random pliable Russian citizen on Telegram and offer them money to do some “act”. Recently, a 62 year old Russian man was paid a few bucks to throw some burning cocktail at a Russian military recruitment center, which is one of the most common gags for these types of attacks.

The most noteworthy was the assassin just caught in Turkey, who blew up the car of the Russian Deputy Chief of Satellite Communications Andrei Torgashov. The now-captured Russian ‘partisan’ was a member of a Navalny youth organization and was said to have been promised “$10k to $20k” for the attack by the Ukrainian SBU. But of course, that isn’t really a “partisan” in the classical sense, acting of their own initiative, but more like a paid dupe.

But in Ukraine, the partisan activity you mentioned is truly surging, with one Ukrainian military volunteer writing the following earlier in the week:

It seems to me that the arson of military vehicles has gotten very out of control.

As a person who collected and handed over more than one car for our army, it is very painful for me to look at each such arson.

Each such car is very difficult to obtain - you need to raise money for it, then drive it, repair it, take it away, and issue all the papers. I put my soul into every car I sell.

And here some minor idiot can burn it for 100 bucks. It shouldn't be like that!

Urgent changes are needed in part of the Criminal Code, including lowering the threshold of responsibility to 14 years for similar crimes.

This is subversive activity, not just destruction of property.

And it's not just that psychological warfare is hostile. It has long since become something we cannot control.

But to firmly answer your question, we don’t actually know much about this latest surge of partisan activity as there haven’t been any concrete details. It’s simply my professional opinion based on a priori knowledge of the conflict’s development that this is likely a combination of both organically rising brazenness of the fed up population, as well as Russian intel services’ work. In particular, randomly torching cars parked on the street can be chalked up to organic action, while the deliberate targeting of train relay-switch boxes is far more likely to be a coordinated intelligence effort where location data for the boxes is fed to someone on the ground from Russian intel sources.

And by the way, Ukrainian troops have been complaining recently about the rise of such partisan actions not in the cities, but even in the frontline towns in Donbass. They say the remainers always give up their positions to the Russians, who strike their HQs, so it’s a growing problem but isn’t quite a critical mass enough to make a deep impact just yet.

4.
(53 votes)

Many armies have crossed the Dnieper River in times of war, in both directions, but never under current ISR conditions. Assuming the Ukrainian state did not break and its army withdrew behind the Dnieper, how much of a barrier could that river be to the Russian Armed Forces?

I’ve written at length about this long ago, toward the start of the blog, where I pretty much concluded that it’s not possible to do, and for Russia to capture Odessa, it would have to re-invade from Kiev on the western side of the river, then come all the way down to capture Kherson, Odessa, etc.

The main issue is not actually the crossing itself—Russia can fairly adequately launch a mass combined amphibious and air-assault operation that could land tens of thousands of troops on the other side to capture a solid beachhead and lodgement in one. The problem is then supplying the force on the other side indefinitely via a secure logistics route—that’s where things fall apart.

It’s one thing to do the initial operation, which could for instance be aided by a mass scale campaign of various effects to disorient and misdirect the enemy. But once the dust settles, the regular supply routes would be under constant long term drone, artillery, and HIMARS attrition that would make holding or expanding that zone a huge untenable problem. Recall that this is the main reason Russia pulled out of Kherson to begin with in the end of 2022. They weren’t chased out, contrary to Ukrainian revisionist propaganda—in fact, Russia had won all the last battles handily and was annihilating Ukrainian forces there with a huge casualty disparity. But unfortunately, the logistics were so tenuous over the one semi-operable Antonovsky Bridge that the risk was simply too high. And this was all before the advent of the latest FPV improvements, which have tripled and quadrupled in range, and many other goodies like cluster-warhead ATACMS, etc.

However, there are a few potential dark horses that maybe could give Russia the ability to safely establish crossings in the distant future.

1. The water level unknowns. At the moment it’s hard to get a bead on what the exact water level situation is ever since the Kakhovka Dam was destroyed. There continue to be reports that some sections of the Dnieper are totally overgrown and easy to cross via vehicle. The problem is, Ukraine still controls other dams further upriver that it can unleash at any time to create floods again—i.e. the Dnipro HPP in Zaporozhye city.

2. Most discussions of crossing the Dnieper revolve around the assumption that Russia would simply cross somewhere near Kherson, like at the old Antonovsky bridges or Kakhovka Dam bridge. But one possibility, though it would be quite a way’s off, hinges on the Russian capture of the entire river zone—i.e. everything west of Donbass and including Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporozhye Oblasts.

If Russia were to capture the eastern part of the actual cities of Dnipro, Zaporozhye, and maybe even Kremenchug, etc., where a lot of bridges and crossings exist, it could create a kind of mass redundancy of logistics that could make crossing the river long term far more viable.

Of course, Ukraine could blow all those bridges during retreat, as I had outlined they would do in one of my first articles here, then that could put a damper on this plan. But Russia may be able to establish similar “under bridge” crossings as they had done with the Antonovsky, or patch the bridges up with some kind of bridging device, depending. For instance, the crossing in Zaporozhye city is over the Dnipro HPP dam itself, and to disable that ‘bridge’ you would have to blow the entire dam, which would be another catastrophic event. Blowing it would keep the bridge from being usable but could potentially take away the AFU’s last trump card in flooding the river, after which point Russia could cross the dry river without much worry of having its logistics flooded out, though there is another HPP further north in Kamianske.

3. The last possibility is simply attritioning the AFU to such a point where Western arms have long been depleted, and HIMARS/ATACMS, etc., are so few that they no longer present that much of a logistical threat. This could come, let’s say, two or so years in the future, where Ukraine’s drone “edge” could likewise be vastly diminished owing to a far more robust Russian EW/AD net. If such a scenario were reached, Russian military planners could feel satisfied with their ability to protect their logistics lines adequately enough to warrant a long term cross-river campaign of this sort.

The above also applies to Ukrainian air defense systems. If they are depleted enough in two or three years’ time to such a point that Russia no longer fears aerial resupply and air-assault missions, then the general staff could feel much more comfortable in attempting to gain the other side of the river. If large An-124s or Il-76s can airdrop supplies all day—not to mention troops—it could alleviate a lot of logistical woes, but long range air defense at the moment would prevent that from being even remotely possible.

In conclusion, I don’t see it being possible any time soon; but if the war continues for another two or three years, with Ukraine badly attritioned and hanging on by a thread, it could become possible owing to a combination of the above factors. Capturing all the river cities like Zaporozhye, Kamianske, etc., in order to control all the HPP plants and prevent the mass discharge of water could give Russia not only the assurance of their logistics lines not being swept away, but also a large number of supply route redundancies which would prevent Ukraine from exercising any pinpoint authority with long range fires over one key route or another. This could allow Russia to use the currently fielded mass overwhelming ‘death by a thousand cuts’ strategy to take the other side of the river via numerous crossings which will be too many to target, and whose main levers of regulation by way of the HPPs will be under Russian control. Couple that with the highly attritioned precision strike and AD capabilities of the AFU, all these combined could potentially lay the groundwork for suitably safe logistics across the river.

But such a time would likely be at least two or three years away at the minimum at the current pace, lest the AFU suffered a rapid uncontrollable collapse in the semi-near future and was forced to immediately give up everything east of the river in one fell swoop. Though not necessarily likely, such a scenario is possible, particularly if Zelensky and co. are hiding the true extent of their current losses and general military structure woes.

5.
(49 votes)

Simplicius, what do you think will happen to the US at the end of this movement to a multipolar world?

That’s a good question. I assume it’s more of a long-term outlook, and one I have given thought to in the past. I think some clues can be found in the competing visions for a “post-deep state” future articulated by Trump, or even influential think tanks like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. That’s because to me these represent growing trends from the disgruntled populist movements for the future of America’s direction as a country, which is also echoed among many of the ‘brightest’ future thought-leaders, e.g. Vivek Ramaswamy.

The obvious overlaps are things like trade protectionism and isolationism, to varying degrees, which are all shots against globalism. Some of the more extreme ideas even propose destroying the USD as global reserve currency, which in many ways is a bugbear on the country due to the known “Triffin dilemma”, amongst other issues. Trump has openly floated “devaluing the USD” to boost exports, for instance.

I mention these things because on the surface there appears to be potential for a big reconfiguration in the U.S.’ relationship with the world in the coming years, not only exogenously from China-Russia’s multipolarity push, but even endogenously from a radical set of shifts of U.S. internal policies; the worse things get for the U.S. and the world, the more radical and far-reaching are the solutions proposed. At the same time, I have strong doubts that even Trump will be able to ‘drain the swamp’ in a way that would truly free the U.S. from the grasp of its most damaging parasites, particularly Israel.

But those are more short term outlooks, your question was likely concerning a more long term one, when full multipolarity is established let’s say 10 or 20 years in the future. One thing we can say almost definitively, is that the U.S. will likely end up in a better position than Europe, because U.S. leaders have smartly sabotaged Europe in the “race to the bottom” to make sure Europe stays “ahead” in that race. Even given all the negative trends and developments, U.S. has many things that Europe lacks, such as energy autonomy, food, and probably somewhat better manufacturing potential.

That’s all to say that Europe probably stands to regress the most if the combined West continues to commit to building a new economic Iron Curtain between themselves and the East in the onset of multipolarity. Unless some black swan event upturns everything, like a potential civil war, the U.S. has simply gone too far ahead of much of the world for it to suffer too noticeably in the intermediate future. Just like Japan was able to keep things together for decades despite massive stagnation, or stagflation, if you will, the U.S. will likely be able to keep up appearances for decades while sulking through a long steady Dark Age of decline.

Look at countries like Brazil, they’re still able to keep things together and even excel in many industries despite high crime and large ethnically disparate population. Thus, without a sudden black swan—which is always possible—I personally foresee the U.S. simply entering an age of decline, where its influence in the world is progressively ceded to China and others and it becomes, perhaps in some ways, more of the country it was in the 1800s, in terms of global influence and positioning; maybe even clinging to a renewed Monroe Doctrine to limit its hegemony to the Western Hemisphere.

It will always have its nukes, its giant “headstart” in first world levels of development, which will take much longer to erode than other countries with a similar downward trajectory. Thus, we can expect the U.S. to still remain amongst the world’s leaders, particularly since other competitors like Europe will be ‘racing it to the bottom’, as mentioned earlier.

The most significant development, to me, will likely be the defeat of the West in the culture war—this by far will have the biggest impact on global developments. The West won the 20th century by way of cultural supremacy, particularly during the cold war, at least in my opinion. Western culture achieved a supreme status of prestige which all nations of the world aspired to. But a double whammy now threatens to dethrone that culture. This is: 1. the economic ascendency of the ‘Orient’, by which I mean the Arabic and Asian world, as well: 2. Western culture’s loss of luster due to its recent total commitment to an extreme of degeneracy utterly abhorrent to the rest of the world.

The culture war was responsible for U.S.’ dominance because everyone wanted to come to the U.S., and live in the country where Hollywood and the world’s greatest music scene existed. But that is slowly changing, particularly since Hollywood is now undergoing death throes and is on its way out; American music likewise has lost its cachet to a large degree. Many Global South countries now prefer their own music, styles, and culture over that of the decadent and descendant American one.

Thus I foresee a long period where the East looks inward and stops taking cues from the West, which no longer has an acceptable vision of the future to offer the world. America will likely continue trying to claw back its place in the world by stoking more conflicts to insert itself into the action, but the problem is, much of America’s military might has now been exposed as weak and declining. And due to the social issues at home, America is not able to address that in any realistic way because the human capital behind its military might—both in terms of the recruits and soldiers, to the manufacturing prowess responsible for its many wonders—is rapidly diminishing.

For now, I see a much slower and more long term development of these trends. I think there will be a lot “more of the same” for several decades with the decline happening gradually. But it’s hard to imagine even in the deep future any overtly “extreme” projections, like for instance the U.S. being a completely irrelevant third world power, or something to that extent—which I’ve seen many people propose.

If you look back hundreds of years, the global power rankings of countries does not change drastically, no matter how many unprecedented and historic disasters, world wars, coups, etc., occur. Generally speaking, the current ‘Great Powers’ of the world have been the same ones at the table since the 1700s or so. Thus, we probably should not expect the most drastic outcomes unless a major black swan event like civil war or secession occurs, which could obviously change the calculus entirely, and is possible within the next decade or two, but likely not as probable as the more mundane scenario of stagnation and gradual decline.

All right, so that was the first 5 questions with the highest votes. Next are 5 I’ve arbitrarily chosen.

6.
Hi Simplicius and thanks for your very enlightening articles.

How do you see the probability of a major European war? From what I can understand the most probable scenario is a truce following Putin's piece proposal but I believe the combined globalist West will use this time to rearm what will remain of Ukraine and the Nato's countries, so to push for the final European conflict, and I do not like this route because I live in there. Do you think Putin will try to avoid any further Russian bloodshed although he knows that the globalists only want to buy time and they will definitely come back stronger? I am trying to put myself to his position. How can you deal with enemies who have lost any military knowledge they had from WWII, first they did not understand they were losing, now they do not understand why they are losing, but they keep persisting coming back to avenge with more fury, as their ego is wounded. I am afraid their spoiled ego will push them to nuclear confrontation.

It definitely appears that’s what the U.S. would like, and is pushing for, in order to reset the world financial system and cut its competitors—both Europe and Russia—down to size to stay ahead as peer leader.

On one hand it “feels” improbable to us, because another war in Europe feels like some fairy tale from over 80 years ago. But when we look at precedent, we must admit that the U.S. has already managed to get Russia to invade two separate Europe-adjacent countries in the past ~15 years, first Georgia and now Ukraine. This to me proves two things:

The U.S. is very capable of pulling the right provocation levers to get Russia to aggressively and kinetically protect its strategic interests.

Putin and Russia—when push comes to shove—are not resistant to the idea of invading countries that create provocations on Russia’s border which are capable of compounding into existential threats of national security down the road.

Using the precedent rubric, we must admit that the possibility of the U.S. forcing Russia into defending itself and its interests in this way may continue, as there are many key pressure points that can be exploited. From Russia’s ‘trapped’ contingent in the PMR, to the isolated Kaliningrad region, to ethnic Russian minorities being repressed and persecuted in the Baltics in the same way they were in Ukraine in the lead-up to the Donbass crisis, to Finland and Estonia playing right-of-passage games in the Gulf of Finland to restrict Russia’s navy, to even potentially Russia’s key ally of Belarus being threatened by NATO’s Polish attack dog. Or most recently: U.S.’ plan of placing intermediate range, nuclear-capable missiles in Europe, which can naught but ratchet up tensions even more and force Russia to respond in a way that will be spun as “aggressive” and “provocative”.

Any one of these can be exploited to foment the next crisis leading to a direct military clash, this time against actual nominally NATO countries, rather than simply NATO-friendly.

This is the main reason that Putin deeply wants to establish a new security architecture in Europe, one which takes into account every country’s most important interests and codifies them into a legal framework a la the Westphalian system. But there’s little chance such a thing will be allowed any time soon, so unfortunately the march toward escalating tensions will continue on for the foreseeable future.

At this point, this seems to have become their new strategy: use Ukrainian cannon-fodder to bleed and delay Russia as long as possible in order to give Europe time to re-arm, force conscription on their populations, etc., and then plan for a 2027-2029 war tied onto the current one. Unfortunately, just as the Ukrainians have been propagandized into a rabid stoicism against Russia, so too have the Finnish and Baltic elites been made to slowly adopt a similar mindset, where they appear to almost welcome a clash with Russia no matter how destructive it could be to them. The citizens may be a different story, but it’s one we’ll never hear because it will be intentionally blotted out by repressive globalist media.

The only possible way I see this speeding train being stopped is through the direction of the U.S., since European vassals still take their guidance from their masters in DC, whether directly or indirectly. If Trump were to pull out of NATO or at least threaten Europe with no U.S. support in a major war, then the yapping chihuahuas will not have the backbone to continue their provocations against Russia alone. However, it is difficult to imagine Trump being able to gain such total control of the deep state and MIC as to have the freedom and agency to actually sever the monumental link with Europe. But even threats, hollow as they may be, could be enough to keep Europeans second guessing and at bay from provoking Russia at least.

7.
There were several questions along this tack which felt connected, so I figured why not switch it up a little and answer something more speculative than what’s usually given tribune on this blog:

Simplicius, do you believe there are supernatural forces at work in the world today in the various hot spots like Ukraine, Middle East, etc?

and:

Here is my rather difficult question to answer, but important to address: what is the role of occult societies and intelligence agencies in controlling world events, and what are the odds that there could be a societal movement to start investigating them and their role in Western societies?

and:

My question... a little bit between Dark Futura and here.

Can You imagine the reasons our Overlords (You know who they are...) chose as their lackeys such a bunch of complete total idiots? In my opinion it's like a damn worse version of the Duke and Duke bet...

Seriously I can understand easily why they could want and try to subvert a culture (divide et impera while You are 1 in 400), but in a hostile country, I see no sense doing it in your own kingdom...

Though it may not seem like it, there are two connecting threads here. Firstly, I don’t know if the forces driving the apex of the pyramid are actually ‘supernatural’ or if the people on top simply believe them to be supernatural. But at some point in an analysis it doesn’t much matter, given that if enough force and action is used to leverage a fanatical belief, then that belief may as well be ‘supernatural’ in nature, as the results will be convincing to that end.

That said, we know Israel and its agents currently control the U.S. and by extension much of the Western world. What is indisputable, is that Israel is led by a fanatical, messianic end times cult at the very top of their leadership pyramid, the Temple Mount movement and likely the more esoteric sects driving it. In Israel, the government is merely a cover for these religious zealots and rabbis, who follow a book written in ancient Babylon, called the Babylonian Talmud. We have a video from the early ‘90s of the current leader, Netanyahu, literally being made to promise to “speed up” the bringing of the messiah at all costs, to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Schneerson.

This means the entire fate of the world is currently being driven in strong part by an ancient metaphysical cult whose roots lay buried deep in ancient Babylon, rather than some kind of civic logic, justice, rationale, ethical governance, etc. This connects to the question of occult societies and secret agencies. The CIA had begun as part of the OSS, which was mostly started by bankers and Wall Street bigwigs as per former CIA Deputy Director Alvin Krongard:

“If you go back to the CIA’s origins during WWII in the Office of Strategic Services...the whole OSS was really nothing but Wall Street bankers and lawyers" -Alvin Krongard, frm CIA deputy director, investment banker The CIA is & has always been the secret police of Wall Street

The proof in the pudding is that CIA pioneer Allen Dulles was in fact a finance big wig himself, connected directly to the Rockefellers and huge firms like JP Morgan. In fact, thanks to this, the first official headquarters of the CIA was in Rockefeller Plaza in NYC, where Dulles also had his office. Thus, the Rockefellers and global financial interests, which were mostly run by Jewish-Zionist banking families, had total control of the CIA from the very beginning, and do so to this day. Most consider the Rockefellers themselves to simply be the American ‘agents’ for House Rothschild, who pretty much created Israel via the Balfour Declaration, and famous photos attest to them at least being close:


Keep in mind, thus far I have used exclusively public, historically confirmed information, without delving into kooky or speculative territory. These are actual known facts you can even read on wikipedia.

But the next part is my own speculative extrapolations of this basic info. Why do current Western leaders seem to be intent on destroying their own countries? One strong possibility is that the fanatical messianic leaders of Israel view all of the West as the descendants of Rome. Recall that Rome was the last great enemy of the Jews, having destroyed their Second Temple and exiled them, not to mention creating the off-shoot Christian religion.

If you study the history of Rome’s collapse, you’ll note it can be argued that it never truly collapsed but rather lives on in today’s Western society. Roman elite and royal families merely transitioned to a large extent into the new Vatican church which began to rule the world for the next millennium. Most of Europe held allegiance to the Church, and was in some offshoot or another just an extension of the Roman Empire and civilization—for instance, the Holy Roman Empire which existed through most of the Middle Ages.

Israeli cult leaders secretly view the Western world—that is, Europe and the U.S.—as basically New Rome, and thus believe they are exacting their ‘revenge’ on the old Romans for what they did to the Jews. It’s perfectly understandable to an extent, wouldn’t you hold the same view, and want some form of retribution?

Thus, this ‘cult’ has no qualms about installing leaders to subvert and destroy all of Rome, err…Europe—just look at Macron, ex-banker at Rothschild Group:


It has, however, always puzzled me why Rothschild would be fine with his native England being destroyed. After all, I have seen an interview with Jacob himself where he said despite his love for Israel, and his family’s role in its creation, his ultimate love and allegiance remained to the UK—and I don’t think he’s lying, after all, he doesn’t choose to live in Israel, does he?

The answer is that I don’t believe all the elements of this global hydra are one monolithic mechanism. They work in conjunction on overlapping interests, and watch out for one another when they can, but do not necessarily subscribe to all of each other’s pursuits. There are many ‘emergent’ properties to the whole mechanism, though it’s not all one or the other. Jacob himself likely truly believed bringing migrants to his ‘beloved’ UK would somehow benefit it, because other more cleverly devious men convinced him of that. But the true apex of the pyramid—the fanatical cultists who may, as David Icke claims, be Sabbatean Frankists—are probably steering this play with a much more direct intent, as described earlier. One thing is certain, while the moneyed powers get all the shine for being global ‘rulers’, the true ‘hand’ behind them must necessarily be the fanatical religious faction. Whether it’s the Jesuits, the Vatican, the Sabbateans—whatever you choose to believe—it can only logically be a spiritual fanaticism capable of such rigorous devotion to total dominion of the earth. The moneyed men are generally their gate-keepers and enforcers throughout history. Why? Mostly because the moneyed men love their temporal pleasures too much, and fear dying; but religious zealots care not for death, and thus will always hold sway via mafia-like fear imposition as they have less to lose.

But this will have to be a topic deserving of its own entire article one day.

8.
I’ll group these longer ones together because they touch on some adjacent things I want to explore:

Note: The question at the end of my background description. So if you can't bear to read everything - just take the question.

According to some of the single-minded Russian fans, the rest of us should just sit back and enjoy the Russian spectacle where, with superior weapons, minimal losses (1:10) and a strategy (which must not be questioned), they will defeat not only Ukraine but the collective West. According to them, eg Gerrard White, Cheetospring, victory materializes through a sudden collapse where Russia can choose whether to walk into Kiev, Odessa or both. US/NATO has nothing to oppose, all material is already destroyed and they have no soldiers who can make a difference in Ukraine. NATO aircraft and missiles will not be able to do any damage but fall from the sky. The West will vaporize into thin air due to emerging Bric's new world order.

I myself support Russia's view of the causes of the conflict and believe that Russia was forced into an attack (based on their defensive doctrine). War is a necessary evil but must be waged quickly and decisively. Civilian losses must be avoided, honor must apply to enemy soldiers and one does not waste one's own soldiers. Prolonging a war that has no prospects is a betrayal of one's own population. We all know that Ukraine violated all of this. But it is clear that Russia underestimates the ability of Ukrainians to hold and hit the goal far in Russia. Russia has overestimated its superiority in artillery and missiles - it is going as slowly as in WW1. My conclusion is that Russia does not own this war, but is also forced into the next best option: war of attrition with constant risk of escalation from the West (which itself risks nothing but material and money).

So to my simple straightforward QUESTION:

What will Russia do in the coming months, before the next US president is sworn in, to break Ukraine's resistance and make Western leaders realize the futility of continued war and instead accede to Russia's perfectly reasonable, logical and pragmatic demands?

and:

If this was a game of chess, I would say that Russia is losing.

Sure, it’s winning on some fronts but it is responding to situations rather than leading.

The opposing side is in control and moving pieces around the board leading to a position where Russia has very limited options on how to respond.

One example is Ukraine massing forces to attack Donbas. Russia had no option but to respond to defend the citizens there from a certain genocide. The west then says Russia invaded Ukraine.

My fear is that they are doing the same now and when the time is right, move some pieces and force Russia’s hand.

In a game of chess, this is what you want because you can predict the opposing sides moves up to 10 or more steps ahead.

The west wants war so that they can default on their debt and create another Bretton Woods agreement where they again control the world’s financial system.

Should the Russians do something more forceful to mix up the board or quickly shut the game down? Rather than slow attrition?

I agree it saves lives but longer term it may lead to a greater loss of lives via a world war.

I’m sure you know that European countries and USA are slowly prepping for the draft and mobilisation - this time men and women (see draft resolutions in Europe and USA)

And the U.K. recently started showing army adverts with young white males so they must be serious now!

and:

At or near the outset, Putin commented that (paraphrased) 'we haven't really started anything yet'. Combine that with the recent hints about AI, and technologies like Penicillin, satellite ISR, and full net-centricity. What do you think Russia's surprises might be, once they really 'start something'.

Firstly, I agree with a lot of the sentiment of the first one. I think people are far too quick to exaggerate Russia’s standing in the war, and whitewash its own struggles and losses. I think that Russia has taken far more damage in this war than many of us would like to admit, which includes losses of all kinds. Also, I think Russia’s large-scale production capacities are likely vastly over-exaggerated. What I’ve found over the course of the war was that Russian industrial yes-men and the General Staff itself has a culture of complacency and exaggeration, such that they’ll smudge the numbers a bit to give an optimistic sheen to things. This is changing somewhat, especially under Belousov, but it’s still a visible aspect of the system.

With that in mind, I think Russia is struggling in its productions far more than people know, which is not exactly bullish for the conflict, on its own. There’s a reason we see only one or two missile strikes per month, because Kalibrs, Kh-101s, etc., are not produced in as high a quantity as people think. There’s a reason T-55 tanks are increasingly seen shipped to the frontline—I can go on and on. Of course, Ukraine’s situation is far worse off, but I believe it’s delusional to think that the victory is coming easily or is absolutely assured for Russia.

That being said, we must still understand that Russia has chosen to fight in a very limited fashion, and does maintain key escalation pivots that could be back-breaking for Ukraine. The most notable is the energy war: for whatever reason Putin has chosen to operate extremely leniently in not wanting to harm the civilian population when it comes to the energy grid. This may be because his general staff planner’s projections showed an unacceptable genocide level of civilian deaths if the grid were to completely go down in the winter, and Putin, whose brother died in the St. Petersburg siege, knows well what such a scenario is like.

Recently, Arestovich commented on this:


Hear it from his own words:

Arestovich recorded a video in which he announced the complete collapse of the Ukrainian energy system for 2-3 Russian missile strikes. Now Ukraine still has a nuclear power plant and an energy bridge with Europe. But Russia can destroy all this with two or three missile strikes, literally throwing the whole country back to the 17th century in a couple of days. Only the village will survive, the lighting will be from splinters. Winter will drive hundreds of thousands of people out of the cities and the whole country will be engaged in survival, not war. Russia, according to him, simply feels sorry for ordinary farmers."

In the video he specifically describes the game Putin has been playing to leverage the gradual uncoupling of the energy grid to leniently give Ukrainian leadership chances to negotiate. In short, in many ways Russia is still holding back, and the main reason for that is I believe Putin has very calculated and advanced knowledge of future projections for what Ukraine’s situation will be next year. He appears to believe that this more moderate method alone will collapse the Ukrainian regime without need of more drastic escalation. Whether he’s right or not is to be seen, but the short of it is that it’s too early to say Russia is not capable of fully subduing Ukraine because Russia has not yet opened up its full complement of abilities.

Thus to answer the ‘we haven’t started anything yet question’, this is mostly what I believe it means. But also recall Putin said that before the September 2022, mobilization—thus what he meant was a general Russian war posture, rather than the early 2022 layout which was more an expeditionary force on a thunder run. For the most part Putin meant, simply, that Russia will now go on a true war footing in terms of building up a full army and industries.

However, I do agree with the general gist that if the war continues grinding on for several years, it’s in many ways a disservice to people and should probably just be halted until Russia can solve its own deficiencies and maybe try again in the future when it’s developed enough technological advantages to decisively defeat the enemy. We all know Russia began the war with extremely poor technological levels of planning—low levels of satellites, low levels of vital battlefield assets like counter-battery radars, etc., mass untreated corruption in the General Staff, etc. Thus, it’s an endless game of catchup that should have been handled long ago. But as I said, it’s still far too early to call it a day, particularly now that Ukrainian lines are collapsing faster than they’ve ever done since 2022.

As to the second question, it’s true that the West holds the cards to basically leading Russia with a sort of carrot-on-a-stick of provocations. Unfortunately it is something that cannot really be avoided because an organization as vast as NATO will always hold escalatory advantage. This includes the West as a whole, which controls the entire global financial system and uses it to deprive Russia of allies via coercion and force.

One of the other problems was articulated by RWA a while back:


For the record, I don’t necessarily agree—at least not entirely—with the above assessment, as I think everything has far more nuance and dimension, and cannot be reduced to a simple axiomatic blanket statement. However, there is some truth to this. One of the reasons is the West is almost entirely run by an unimaginably vast and Byzantine intelligence complex, with thousands of think-tanks and intel services churning strategy 24/7, with trillions—effectively infinite—amounts of dark money funding projects to perpetually destabilize their enemies and stay ‘one step ahead’. This is the advantage you have when you’ve got the world’s reserve currency, while other nations have to actually balance their budgets.

Russia, China, etc., are not run this way. They don’t have the same capacity for planning, subterfuge, and intrigues—nor the endless money for this. Thus, they will naturally always remain a step behind and be forced to play reactively to the West’s hands. This is simple realpolitik reality. The West has achieved an unprecedented miracle in merging their intelligence apparatus, MIC, and corporate-banking power structures into one unfathomable Leviathan, with nearly omnipotent reach and influence.

However, to assume it’s merely black and white like this is to ignore the reality of the situation. There are many asymmetrical actions undertaken beneath the surface which are having major impacts on the U.S. and combined West—most recently just look at U.S. and France being booted out of Africa and the Middle East.

And lastly, in many ways the U.S.’ provocations against Russia have been a net positive, anyway. Because it is single-handedly allowing Russia to win back its old Soviet or Imperial territories which will secure Russia’s flanks for generations to come, not to mention priceless geostrategic areas like the Donbass and Crimea, when it comes to ports, the wheat heartland, precious metals and rare earths, etc.

9.
My question is: which factions in the West actually want a full-on war between Russia and NATO, versus just "beating Russia", and why do they want that?

It seems unpackaging this dynamic may offer the best clues to avoiding (more) major war, while it's fair to acknowledge that were any of the factions in the West truly sane we'd not be in any of this mess.

I chose this question not because I had a long detailed answer in mind, but rather that there’s one very critical point that needs to be made on this matter.

Which is: I believe the U.S. and NATO’s primary goal in all the war-mongering that we’ve seen is not necessarily to defeat Russia on the battlefield in full, which everyone knows is either not possible or would take a gargantuan effort with millions of deaths on both sides, but rather to put so much pressure on the Russian leadership and ruling class as to stoke divisions, create societal fractures, and hopefully foment a revolution of some kind.

The West has convinced itself that Russia and Putin are politically weak, particularly after they witnessed such disturbances as the Prigozhin would-be revolt, i.e. ‘March of Justice’ on Moscow. Not only that, but all the problems in the General Staff—the mass amounts of firings and arrests we’ve seen—has likely given credence to the West’s belief that the Russian system as a whole is vulnerable and stands on shaky grounds.

Thus, the West likely believes that as long as they can continue applying massive pressure, something will “give” and major cracks will begin to form. In their mind this pressure could include a kinetic conflict, which is why they are hellbent on figuring out a way to create a ground war without the use of nukes. To the U.S. in particular, it’s a win-win situation: if the war goes on indefinitely between European ‘allies’ and Russia, then both get progressively destroyed, economically damaged beyond repair, etc., and the U.S. again rises from the ashes as supreme. And if the pressure from such a war is too high on Russian society, then there’s a chance for revolt and the overthrow of Putin, which would allow the U.S. to potentially put some amenable pro-Western puppet in place.

But the discussion underneath the original question had some good points. There is definitely a strategy of ‘containment’ which seeks to merely apply constant pressure on Russia to always keep it on the back foot, but as others have said, there is a hawk faction—albeit a small one—that would like to see the conflict actually go kinetic for the above-stated reasons. As I always say, no group—the West included—is monolithic; everyone is ruled by competing interests which often overlap to serve each other’s goals.

The overall goal is to weaken Russia and keep it contained. But the problem with the ‘hands off’ version of the strategy is that by reorienting to the ascendant East, Russia is gaining far too much economic might—just note its recent promotion to number four on the GDP PPP list, surpassing both Germany and Japan, all while being the most sanctioned country on earth.

Thus, for the West to simply sabotage Russia’s economic connections with Europe is not enough. Cutting Russia off from Europe has only allowed Russia to reorient to even stronger markets. If they sit back and allow this to go on, Russia will simply continue gaining strength until it becomes an unbearable superpower. Thus, the U.S. and vassals have decided a far more proactive approach is needed. It wasn’t just enough to cut Russia off, but now Russia must be lured into actual kinetic traps to force its hand, and cause some kind of major, permanent destruction which can—they hope—lead to a political revolution to overthrow Putin and other patriot-nationalists.

Which faction wants this? It’s the same faction whose lineage goes all the way back to the days of Milner and Rhodes, and the planned world wars to destroy Germany and Russia to retain the British Empire’s supremacy. It’s the faction of the Bildebergers who are connected by way of their control of both the intelligence agencies and the financial system. As an example—most know about Anthony Blinken’s famous connections to Maxwell and the Mossad via his stepfather, but few seem to know that Blinken’s real father was co-founder of the Warburg Pincus firm, linked to the dynastic Warburg banking family. This family is not only at the top of the global ruling elite tree just beneath Rothschild, but was even intermarried with Jacob Schiff, who had a famous hatred for Russia.


This is the small faction of banking family bloodline elites which continue to hold sway at the very top of the West’s power structures. They were already responsible for starting both world wars of the 20th century, do you really think they fear starting another kinetic European conflict to destroy that which threatens their global rule?

10.
Let us assume Russia does attain several of its high-level goals, that they are seen by the world at large as the “winners“,Natos prestige being neutered, etc., where do you see

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.policyed.org/battlegrounds/embracing-strategic-empathy/video?utm_campaign=The%20Fight%20to%20Defend%20the%20Free%20World&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--amer8JQFEH7hTNULR7dyo-xKlqHSQJy3Mgd1yj_KUjqm-45W929gKjLxR7dYNFHUG6Doy3X0-_owQYi5RLyzd8innoA&_hsmi=205021489&utm_content=205021489&utm_source=hs_automation

[Crafty_Dog]

Stale Foreign-Policy Ideas Imperil America
A failed strategy gave us a dangerous world and created a need for fresh thinking.
By Walter Russell Mead
Aug. 19, 2024 5:29 pm ET



As hungry revisionist powers challenge the existing world order in the Middle East, Ukraine and the South China Sea, American foreign policy looks increasingly lost. In World War II, we had a plan: beat Germany first, then Japan, and then try to build a robust enough peace to prevent World War III. During the Cold War, the plan was to contain the spread of communism without a nuclear war until the Soviet Union’s inner failings brought it down. After the Cold War, the plan was to use America’s moment of unipolar dominance to build a peaceful, rules-driven world order.

While America’s World War II and Cold War strategies worked out well, our post-Cold War strategy failed. The unipolar moment is over, but today’s world isn’t peaceful, orderly or rules-driven. Instead, we are looking at an era of geopolitical competition driving a wave of wars.

The world we inhabit is nastier and more dangerous than the posthistorical paradise we dreamed of at the end of the Cold War. American foreign-policy makers have to go back to the drawing board to figure out what comes next. Foreign policy is going to be riskier, and our choices will often be uglier than we hoped they’d be.

Driving that debate is the disillusionment of many younger Americans with the failures of 21st-century U.S. foreign policy. American military interventions led to “endless wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan. American advocacy of free trade allowed a cheating China to emerge as a hostile superpower. American promotion of democracy abroad failed to halt a democratic recession that has sent freedom into retreat around the world. Given this record of failure, wouldn’t it be smarter and cheaper for America to attempt less? Maybe it’s time for some healthy restraint.

Most of the old foreign-policy establishment shudders in horror at the calls for restraint. When Sen. JD Vance criticizes the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, they think about how America’s refusal to back Britain and France in the 1930s aided Hitler in his expansion across Europe. When Sen. Josh Hawley calls for protectionist tariffs, they think of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, widely blamed for worsening the Great Depression. A globally engaged America, the Old Guard deeply believes, is absolutely necessary for the peace, freedom and even survival of the whole human race.

Both sides have scored points, but neither blind ideological commitment to global engagement nor knee-jerk calls for restraint amounts to a strategy. Strategy begins with the question of interests and moves on to priorities and costs. The strategists who helped us win World War II and the Cold War built on concepts of the national interest with deep roots in American history.

Historically, we needed to prevent foreign countries from interfering in our domestic politics. We needed freedom of the seas. We needed to dissuade any hostile great power from challenging our security in the Western Hemisphere. We needed to deter a single great power from dominating either Europe or Asia. We needed to ensure the freedom of our citizens to travel, invest and do business overseas. We needed to prevent rivals from cutting us off from vital supplies. We needed to protect the security of our global communications as waves of new technologies and ultimately the internet and satellite networks made connectivity the key to economic and military power.

Those interests still matter today. They matter a lot. But the restrainers are right about cost. The end of the unipolar moment means we have to think much harder about what we do and how we do it. There are good things we want that we just can’t afford to pursue. From an American point of view, geopolitical security is a must-have; freedom of religion in Turkmenistan is a luxury.

Historically America has been good at getting its way on the cheap. During World War II, the U.S. relied on Stalin’s Red Army to bleed Nazi Germany. We won the Cold War in part because Richard Nixon pulled China away from the Soviet Union. Finding allies who share burdens rather than hoping to ride free on our might needs to become a priority.

Sustainable strategy requires painful reform. The cumbersome structure of our military forces, our disastrous procurement processes and the entrenched bureaucratic dysfunction of the Pentagon were burdens we could afford in a unipolar world. We can’t now.

American policies must change with the times. The Old Guard is right that our interests are global and that the ostrich approach to foreign policy won’t work. The restrainers are right that our current course is militarily unsound, politically unpopular and fiscally unsustainable.

What’s needed is fresh thinking about how to advance enduring interests in a changing world. Let’s hope it comes quickly. We don’t have much time.

[Crafty_Dog]

Quoting this from the preceding:

Historically, we needed to prevent foreign countries from interfering in our domestic politics.

We needed freedom of the seas.

We needed to dissuade any hostile great power from challenging our security in the Western Hemisphere.

We needed to deter a single great power from dominating either Europe or Asia.

We needed to ensure the freedom of our citizens to travel, invest and do business overseas.

We needed to prevent rivals from cutting us off from vital supplies.

We needed to protect the security of our global communications as waves of new technologies and ultimately the internet and satellite networks made connectivity the key to economic and military power.

[Crafty_Dog]

third

https://breakingdefense.com/2024/07/national-defense-commission-pentagon-has-insufficient-forces-inadequate-to-face-china-russia/

[Crafty_Dog]

August 23, 2024
View On Website
Open as PDF

On Ukraine, India Stands Firm With Neutrality
New Delhi is pursuing a pragmatic approach, and others seem to be following suit.
By: Antonia Colibasanu
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Kyiv on Friday to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a calculated diplomatic move designed to underscore India’s steadfast neutrality on the Ukraine war. The trip comes on the heels of Modi’s visit in July to Moscow for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as India’s hosting of the Voice of the Global South Summit on Aug. 17, an event which notably excluded China and Pakistan.

No Indian prime minister has been to Ukraine since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Relations between the two countries flourished in the years immediately following the Soviet Union’s collapse but cooled after Kyiv signed a deal in 1996 to provide tanks to Pakistan and supported U.N. resolutions condemning India’s nuclear weapons tests and endorsing economic sanctions against it in 1998.

While their political relations stagnated, their economic ties continued to grow. In the 1990s, the Indian defense sector looked to Ukraine as an alternate supplier of components for MiG-29 fighter jets and other Soviet-era weapons, given Moscow’s failure to meet its commitments in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's disintegration. In 1994, India and Ukraine set up a joint commission focused on economic, scientific and industrial cooperation, which has become key in setting the agenda for their economic relations.

Prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, India was Ukraine’s second-largest export destination in Asia (after China) and its fifth-largest market overall, accounting for 4 percent of total exports. Military and technology were key areas of economic cooperation. The Indian navy uses more than 150 gas turbine engines manufactured by Ukraine’s state-owned Zorya-Mashproekt on a contract dating back to the early 1990s. India hopes to produce its own engines in the future, but the process is complex and time-consuming. In an attempt to limit its dependence on Ukrainian manufacturers, India has partnered with global companies like GE Marine, seeking to leverage the U.S. firm's expertise in gas turbine technology. India and Ukraine have also collaborated since 2009 on a project to upgrade about 105 AN-32 aircraft belonging to the Indian air force. The project has experienced delays due to the Ukraine conflict but is still making progress, with the majority of the work being done in India.

In terms of Indian exports to Ukraine, pharmaceutical products were among the most important prior to the war. Indian generic drug manufacturers built a strong presence in the country, and India was among Ukraine’s top three suppliers of pharmaceutical goods. For India, Ukraine’s official candidacy status for accession to the European Union, giving Kyiv wider access to the EU market, opens potential new investment opportunities. Ukraine's post-war reconstruction will also likely present promising business opportunities for Indian companies.

However, their potential for expanded bilateral relations is complicated by the fact that New Delhi has long maintained close ties to Moscow, a relationship that hasn’t faltered throughout Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine. India purchases more than 40 percent of its oil and 60 percent of its arms from Russia, in addition to substantial amounts of coal, fertilizer, vegetable oil and precious metals. The commander-in-chief of the Russian navy visited India just this week to discuss prospects for strengthening bilateral cooperation amid Russian efforts to build up its navy and increase its presence in the Indian Ocean. This year, Russia supplied India with two warships as part of a 2018 deal. The two countries have used rupees and other alternative currencies, including UAE dirhams, to facilitate payments despite tightening pressure from Western sanctions. One currency that they have tried to avoid is the Chinese yuan, as China is India’s main competitor in Asia.

For the most part, New Delhi has actually benefited from the Western sanctions regime, which encouraged Moscow to seek stronger ties with the country. However, India is pursuing a cautious approach when it comes to Russia: It needs to maintain good working relations with the West but also wants to entertain a closer relationship with Russia to prevent Moscow from ingratiating itself with Beijing. India also understands that the West has an interest in preserving New Delhi’s influence with the Kremlin so it can act as a counterweight to China. It’s a tricky strategy, but by visiting Kyiv this week, Modi wants to show that India has no interest in alienating the West and will maintain ties with Ukraine in the long term.

India’s approach is emblematic of a broader trend among countries of the Global South that prioritizes national interests over international alignments. These countries are navigating the increasingly rough waters of international diplomacy by maintaining their neutrality, while still trying to exploit short-term advantages and secure favorable long-term relationships. This strategy presents a challenge for China and Russia, both of which have been actively seeking to construct alliances that counter Western-dominated groupings like the G7. Beijing and Moscow are promoting various international platforms, including the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as avenues to restore balance and equity in world affairs. Despite being a member of both organizations, India has chosen to maintain its distance, establishing its own platform, called the Voice of the Global South Summit, instead of going all-in on a China- or Russia-led initiative.

The global order is thus increasingly characterized by a complex web of national interests, as governments grow reluctant to champion one side over the other. Paradoxically, it reflects Russian President Vladimir Putin’s long-held vision for a multipolar world. Before the Ukraine conflict, the geopolitical landscape was dominated by superpowers like the United States, China and Russia that could exert considerable pressure on smaller nations. The increasing volatility between countries of the East and the West has exposed the limits of these power dynamics.

Many of these limits have to do with Russia’s loss of global posture and general weakening. The Russian economy has been severely hit not just by Western sanctions but by its failure to build a functioning war economy. Though economic data released by Moscow appear to show promising results, they merely reflect the country’s shift to an economy focused on meeting military needs and domestic production of goods that have become inaccessible due to sanctions. Limitations on energy exports, financial transactions and technology transfers have not only made it necessary for Russia to find alternative markets but also forced local consumers to accept “made in Russia” policies and adapt to consistently high inflation rates, which the Russian central bank has still not gotten under control. The war has also disrupted supply lines, forcing Russia to redraw routes into global markets.

From a military standpoint, the conflict in Ukraine has revealed notable vulnerabilities in the Russian armed forces. It has exposed shortcomings in Russia’s military strategy, logistics and morale, eroding Russia’s status as a military hegemon and prompting questions over its long-term capabilities. Russia’s global standing has taken a permanent hit, limiting its capacity to exert influence globally and forcing it to focus on growing its influence in the Global South, where it also appears to be failing.

Most countries have preferred to follow India’s lead in pursuing an independent foreign policy. India's response to the Ukraine conflict has been pragmatic and cautious, as it defends its strategic autonomy. It has sought to diversity its foreign policy, while continuing to value its relationships with both Russia and the West. And by establishing itself as a model for others, it’s positioning itself as a major player on the global stage.

[Crafty_Dog]

The West’s Next Challenge Is the Rising Axis of Autocracies
By Yaroslav TrofimovFollow
Updated Aug. 24, 2024 12:01 am ET


The coalescing partnership of autocracies led by China and Russia will impose strategic choices on Western democracies, no matter who wins the U.S. presidential election.

Can the U.S. and its allies deter all these rivals—including Iran and North Korea—at the same time, given the decay in the West’s military-industrial base and the unwillingness of voters to spend dramatically more on defense?

And if not, should, and could, an accommodation be sought with one of the rival great powers? If so, which one—and at what cost?

The current moment is uniquely complicated, with multiple crises around the world increasingly interconnected. Bloody wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are showing no signs of abating, Iran is contemplating a military response against Israel, China is engaging in low-level sea clashes with the Philippines and intimidating Taiwan, and North Korea is ramping up provocations against South Korea.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served in senior national-security roles in the Trump White House, compared the state of the world to a game of whack-a-mole—with all the moles now up. “Because the crises erupt at the same time, the capability is not there to handle all simultaneously, and it gets out of control,” he said. “The ability to react is limited. You’re stretched, and you never want to be stretched.”

Though still by far the biggest military power, the U.S. is hard-pressed to deal with the world on fire, especially as China keeps growing its military muscle, some strategists warn. While the U.S. and the European nations have moved to increase military production, including at brand-new ammunition plants, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, these steps are nowhere near sufficient for the requirements of modern conflict, they say.

“We are already involved in two wars, and we are struggling right now to keep up providing munitions and equipment to our allies. If we get involved in a global war, we would be significantly challenged to deal with our adversaries and the capabilities that they have,” said retired Gen. Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff for the Army.


Soldiers in eastern Ukraine in August; the U.S. and allies’ steps to increase military production aren’t keeping up with modern warfare. Photo: Roman Pilipey/AFP/Getty Images

Pokrovsk, Ukraine, following a Russian attack earlier this month. Photo: Roman Pilipey/AFP/Getty Images
While acknowledging the depletion of stocks, the Pentagon says that the U.S. remains ready for all potential scenarios, including a full-scale war with China that it says it considers neither imminent nor inevitable. “I am fully confident in our force, and you should be, too,” Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said to applause at the Aspen Security Forum last month.

Still, inside the Republican party, influential voices—including vice-presidential candidate JD Vance—have pointed to America’s inability to produce enough munitions as a reason to abandon Ukraine and commitments to European security. They say the U.S. should pivot to the one area that really matters: East Asia. “The United States is fundamentally limited,” Vance said in a February speech in Germany.

One potential approach mulled within Trump’s orbit would be to attempt the “reverse Kissinger,” a reference to Henry Kissinger’s deal with Communist China that cemented Beijing’s split from the Soviet Union in the 1970s. The idea this time is to woo President Vladimir Putin toward the U.S., away from his strengthening bond with Chinese leader Xi Jinping—at the expense of Ukraine, and Europe.

“One of the things that America should do, from a purely American strategic perspective, is to figure out a way to have a grand bargain with Russia,” said Sumantra Maitra, director of research at the American Ideas Institute, a conservative think tank. “Whether that is doable or not is a difficult question, depending on where Russian red lines lie. But fundamentally it would mean a new security architecture in Europe.”

Many Republicans, as well as Biden-Harris administration officials, describe such ideas as a delusional folly. After hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers were killed or maimed with the help of American weapons in Ukraine, and after the U.S. and allies spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the war there, there can be no accommodation with Putin or going back to the status quo ante, they say.

“These four dictators—Putin, Xi, the Iranian ayatollahs and Kim Jong Un—are all in this together, in an unholy alliance, which reminds me of my father’s war, World War II,” said Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Some senior Republicans who would likely have top positions in a second Trump administration, such as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have called for further tightening sanctions on Russia and dramatically increasing military support for Ukraine, while also maintaining strong pressure on China, North Korea and Iran. It isn’t clear what path Trump, if elected, would adopt. The former president has repeatedly promised to strike a peace deal for Ukraine in 24 hours, without explaining how.


Trump’s rival in the U.S. presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris, has indicated she will, by and large, seek continuity with the approach of President Biden, who returned U.S. forces to Europe’s eastern flank, welcomed Sweden and Finland into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, provided Ukraine with weapons, and strengthened a network of alliances and partnerships in Asia.


Vice President Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Monday.  Photo: Gabriella Demczuk for WSJ

Former President Donald Trump addressed the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July. Photo: Gabriella Demczuk for WSJ
In Thursday’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Harris spoke of an “enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny” and said she would make sure “America—not China—wins the competition for the 21st century, and that we strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership.”

That is a sentiment many Republicans share. If the U.S. wants to maintain its privileged position, it has no choice but to continue its engagement in all major theaters around the world, said Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas). “Nothing happens without American leadership,” he said. “Like it or not, but this is part of the price we pay for being the pre-eminent economy and superpower in the world.”

European and, to an extent, Asian allies have been comforted by the rhetoric of the Biden-Harris administration. But Trump’s unpredictability and threats while in office also forced European nations to make painful choices, such as increasing investment in defense, that proved to be indispensable once Russia invaded Ukraine.

“The really interesting question for 2025 is which leader will be more capable of rounding up the strongest posse that actually deters our adversaries,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.

The gravest risk of any attempt to drive a wedge between Russia and China by sacrificing Ukraine and Europe’s security is that such a shift could backfire by destroying America’s most valuable foreign-policy asset—its own network of alliances, some Biden administration officials and Democratic leaders warn.

“It would accelerate hedging by our partners in the Indo-Pacific and aggression by China. It would make every ally and partner we have, globally, question whether they can count on us,” Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.) said.

While China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are all increasingly cooperating in diplomatic, intelligence and military affairs, they still harbor mutual suspicions. And though they agree on the need to remove the U.S. as the pre-eminent world power, their priorities in their own regions don’t always overlap. China so far has declined to provide direct military help to Russia, and the partnership between these autocracies is nowhere near the interoperability and mutual defense commitment of a true alliance like NATO.

The U.S. and South Korea held combined military exercises in August to strengthen their joint readiness against a potential North Korean threat. Photo: Korea Defense Ministry/Zuma Press

An armored vehicle in Taoyuan, Taiwan, during military drills in July to demonstrate readiness against a potential threat from China. Photo: Justin Chan/AFP/Getty Images
“Yes, there are thickening connections between some of these states, but there’s nothing like the ballast, the history, the shared values that still exist within the U.S. alliance system,” said Michael Fullilove, executive director of the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank. “The West still retains enormous strengths that we should not undervalue.”

China’s two strategic goals—splitting the U.S. from Europe while propping up Russia—remain mutually exclusive as long as America’s commitment to Europe remains solid, Western officials say.

Many European governments, however, are ready to toe America’s line on China only as long as they think they can count on Washington’s protection from Putin. “If the U.S. appeases Russia to focus on China, Europe will have to deal more with China to focus on Russia,” said Anton Hofreiter, chair of the European affairs committee in the German parliament. “If the U.S. decides to leave Europe alone, the voices of appeasement in Europe would be much stronger, saying that we are not strong enough to confront both China and Russia without the Americans.”

China is certainly eager to woo European governments, a task that has become much more difficult because of Beijing’s support for Putin.

“Europe needs to do some strategic independence,” said Wang Huiyao, president of the Center for China and Globalization, a think tank in Beijing. “China can help the EU solve the Russian problem, and the EU can help China solve the U.S. problem—and then we all get along, which is better than going to war. Russia will in the end have to learn the lesson and maybe become more stabilized for some time rather than being pushed toward drastic action.”

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
How should the U.S. and its allies respond to the rising axis of autocracies? Join the conversation below.

Wang, a former government adviser, added that while it is natural for Russia, Iran, North Korea—and China—to communicate because they all feel pressure from Washington, Beijing seeks a more constructive relationship with the U.S. “In the Soviet Union era, when the U.S. needed China, China was forthcoming. Now the U.S. is not even bothered to talk to China on the issues.”

A former senior U.S. official also referred to that time—but with the roles of the U.S. and China now reversed. He pointed out that time is no longer necessarily working in China’s favor, as its population ages, economic growth slows and the U.S. maintains or widens the lead in key defense technologies, such as military uses of artificial intelligence.

Instead of openly confronting Beijing, “now is the time to hide our strength and bide our time,” he said, citing the famous 1980s foreign-policy dictum of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.

[Crafty_Dog]

(1) HARRIS DEPUTY NSA: U.S. SHOULD PULL BACK AS GLOBAL LEADER: In “An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for 21st Century Order”, Deputy National Security Advisor to the Vice President Rebecca Lissner wrote that the U.S. should “give up on strategic primacy” and engage in a “strategy of openness.”

“As the unipolar moment wanes, so too must any illusions of the United States’ ability to craft order unilaterally and universally according to its own liberal preferences,” Lissner said.

Why It Matters: If Harris wins in November, Lissner will likely be appointed as the Deputy National Security Advisor. Lissner’s argument for pulling back on U.S. hegemony, especially in the Indo-Pacific, would open the door for U.S. adversaries to assert regional hegemony. However, the U.S. is unlikely to pull back from the Middle East or Europe, and the Harris administration could pivot away from China. – R.C.


Harris campaign advisor Brian Deese called for a “Clean Energy Marshall Plan,” to finance foreign deployments of U.S. clean energy technology and secure more resilient supply chains. Deese said the U.S. should create a strategic reserve for minerals used in clean energy technology, and impose carbon-based import tariffs.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/perils-isolationism-condoleezza-rice

[DougMacG]

www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/09/02/condoleezza_rice_we_cant_leave_some_americans_behind_while_touting_macro_benefits_of_globalization.html

[DougMacG]

If October is one of the months China could launch an invasion on Taiwan, they must be looking at this year as the best opportunity.  (I hope they're not reading the forum.)

Who is minding the American store?

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/09/the-biden-harris-world-is-afire/
Victor Davis Hanson

"We are in perilous times."

[Doug]  If something goes wrong, this article called it.

Both Reagan and Trump had the foreign policy advantage of having their domestic political opponents warn the world these guys are dangerous and unpredictable.

From the article:  "there really is no President Biden or Vice President Harris. The former is non compos mentis and failing ever more rapidly. The latter has no clue who she is or what she should do. The cabal that engineered their respective exits and entrances cares more about retaining power than using it for American interests."

[DougMacG]

 The Commission on the National Defense Strategy released its final report to Congress and the President in July. Walter Russell Mead comments on its disturbing conclusions:

The U.S. faces the “most serious and most challenging” threats since 1945, including the real risk of “near-term major war.” The report warns: “The nation was last prepared for such a fight during the Cold War, which ended 35 years ago. It is not prepared today.”

Worse, “China and Russia’s ‘no-limits’ partnership, formed in February 2022 just days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has only deepened and broadened to include a military and economic partnership with Iran and North Korea. . . . This new alignment of nations opposed to U.S. interests creates a real risk, if not likelihood, that conflict anywhere could become a multitheater or global war.”

Should such a conflict break out, “the Commission finds that the U.S. military lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat.” (Sources: wsj.com, armed-services.senate.gov)