Pro-Russian, anti-Semitic, and smart:
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Subscriber Mailbag - Answers (7/28/24)
SIMPLICIUS
JUL 29
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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.htmlBut 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
