Preparing New...

 ... cannon fodder. Hitler-Jugend. Or, rather, Zelensky Jugend.

A Ukrainian copy. We know the final, right?

“History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce.” (c) Karl Marx. 

Why Do They Even Publish This Rubbish.

I am on record--incessantly--that one of the reasons the West finds itself where it is today partially due to "elites" which are severely limited in their views on the realities of the 21st century. Those realities cannot be grasped without serious knowledge and experiences which constitute an amalgamation of high level technological expertise and historical insights as reminders. Reminders but nothing more, and even their reminders' role is for a moral guidance primarily. Life and civilization proved already that, apart from human nature which is fairly static, extrapolations based solely on "historical precedents" are not only fool's errand but could be highly misleading. Enter RT's latest "opinion piece" on 404 by a historian Tarik Cyril Amar on "War in Ukraine". His piece precisely fits the narrative which is behind many chicken-hawks' behavior in D.C. because they cannot grasp realities. Amar writes:

In a large-scale land war between Russia and Ukraine without direct, military Western intervention on Kiev’s side, three things are likely to happen. The fighting would occur on Ukraine’s territory. In view of its superiority in men, arms, and capabilities, Russia would win. Yet, finally, it would pay a high price: at least parts of the Ukrainian military are much better prepared than in 2014, and they have experience and more robust morale now. Moreover, US President Joe Biden has promised to continue arming Ukraine and go “above and beyond” what it has already received.  In sum, it would be unrealistic to expect anything but hard fighting and severe losses on both sides, not to speak of the mess any large-scale, long-term occupation would become. This would not be a re-run of Russia’s comparatively easy victory over Georgia in 2008. 

The last phrase about 2008 betrays pretty much the main reason why many even in comments at RT noted that the piece is rubbish. Of course, it is. He draws and extrapolates from the Russian-Georgian War not understanding that those are not only incorrect but highly misleading.  I need to remind him (and people at RT who allow this sophomoric attempt at warfare writing) that Valery Gerasimov, quoting Alexander Svechin stated: “Each war represents an isolated case, requiring an understanding of its own particular logic, its own unique character.” For starters Russia and her Armed Forces of 2021 and of 2008 are separated not just by 13 years, but by two generations of weapon systems and C4ISR. So, here are some pointers to him:

1. The United States cannot supply 404 with anything which goes "above and beyond", because it cannot supply 404 with what the US has at the core of her main striking and defensive capabilities (grossly overstated as such) because even to operate something like AD complex Patriot PAC3 or, just for the sake of argument, F-35, let alone requiring their integration into the structures of VSU requires a few years of training and developing of procedures. So, "above and beyond" in this case means yet again--purchases of the older Soviet equipment and ammo from the former Warsaw Pact countries and shipping it to 404, such as rockets for MLRS, and continuation of supplying the communications and other tactical level hardware ranging from anti-tank weapons (Javelins) and anti-battery radar. Some FLIRs and night vision systems here and there, plus, "advisers". It wouldn't matter because all of that "above and beyond" is not survivable on the modern battlefield where Russian Armed Forces are present.

2. Latest reports of Ukrainian "better prepared" VSU testify to a complete collapse of the morale, wide-spread drug and alcohol use, marauding for food and other signs of a "better prepared" force. Amar also doesn't understand how modern wars are fought in 2021. Everybody's favorite IPW (Initial Period of War) is basically a shutting down enemy's (VSU's) C4ISR (no, "above and beyond" NATO technology will not help, it also will be disabled) and then "working" the list of targets by stand-off weapons which cannot be stopped or intercepted which collapse completely any remaining Command and Control capability and after that Air Force begins reducing the remaining VSU force to pockets of panicked, shell-shocked, demoralized people. Only after that Russian armor and infantry, including tactical firepower such as TOS, Grad-K etc. begin to roll in to mop-up whatever is left. Simultaneously, stand-off strikes will be launched at the NATO and CIA ran facilities on the territory of 404 and most important, RuAF will be in the mode of intercepting and forcing landing of the personal aircraft which will be taking off from Borispol airport and airfields surrounding Kiev, carrying the Ukrainian government and "elites" trying to escape facing the war crimes tribunal in Moscow. 

But that is purely military thing. If Amar thinks that (just for the sake of argument) NATO forces will be somehow involved there in a full blown scale war with Russia, I have a news for him--the outcome will be pretty much the same, with that difference that NATO may lose not just many people but some very high value and prestigious assets such as destroyers and LHDs or aircraft carriers and a lot of armor. Like really a lot. In the end, Russians do not care about "sanctions" or "isolation", Amar needs to update himself on why it is so. I'll give him a hint: hysteria in the West is a direct result of this.  Just recall that, among many other things, in June this year:

Russia is cutting the U.S. dollar from its $186 billion National Wealth Fund as Washington continues to impose sanctions on Moscow. The move was announced at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Thursday by Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. “Like the central bank, we have decided to reduce investments of the NWF in dollar assets,” he told reporters, according to a Reuters translation, adding that the NWF will instead invest in euro, Chinese yuan and gold assets. The changes to the NWF are expected to happen within the next month. Once complete, the share of euro assets in the fund is expected to stand at 40%, the yuan at 30% and gold at 20%. Meanwhile, the Japanese yen and British pound will likely make up 5% each.

So, I don't know why Amar wrote and RT published this rubbish but what is clear, the war will be very different from what Amar thinks and the US is desperate to start anything because 404 is a living proof of stupidly and myopia of the America's ruling class. Keep an eye on this thing, could be interesting, especially after Gerasimov stating today that Russia will stop any provocations from 404. 

A Ukrainian navy vessel, named the Donbass, has set course to pass through Russian territorial waters off the coast of Crimea and is ignoring warnings to turn around, border officials have reported. The incident comes at a time of heightened tensions between Russia and Ukraine that have caused alarm internationally.In a statement issued late on Thursday night, Russia’s FSB announced that “on December 9 at 9.12am, the command ship ‘Donbass’ of the Ukrainian Navy left the port of Mariupol and began heading for the Kerch  Strait.”According to officials, the vessel did not have permission to pass through the Russian-controlled Kerch-Yenikalsky canal that divides the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov.The Ukrainian crew have reportedly insisted that they do not intend to pass through the waters. However, according to the FSB, “at present, the Donbass is a distance of 18 nautical miles from the Kerch Strait and is not complying with the requirements to change course. These actions pose a threat to the safety of navigation.”

Well, it is going to be interesting to see how this rusty bathtub will be stopped. Most likely Coast Guard will disable its stern screw (propeller)-rudder group.

Let's Be Real, Please.

So called "realists" in the US have no real chance to change US foreign policy no matter what they do and no matter how they try to convince themselves that they have a shot at it without addressing a fundamental issue of the American nationhood and economic system. To start with: large portions of the American "realists" are beholden primarily, not exclusively, to GOP, which is a party of cowards well entrenched with the military-industrial complex and values of Washington Consensus. So, do bees hate honey? Moreover, American "realists" have no real narrative, because they cannot have one in the only framework they know--and this one, yet again, assumes America's primacy in economy and military matters. This is not to say that "realists" do not understand a simple fact that the United States simply cannot fight and win modern wars against even mildly competent enemy--some of them do understand that--it is just that any appeals to "restrain" or attempts to engage overwhelmingly dominant neocon interventionist D.C. establishment in some "scholarly", presumed to be "rational", discussion is a waste of time. This is not to say that "realists" do not try. 

A week or so ago there was a tempest in the ideological teacup of America's "strategizing" circles when utterly neocon and incompetent Foundation for Defense of Democracies (I know, I know--it is hilarious) released yet another, in the long list of the US geopolitical wet dreams, "strategy" on how to "defend" the US by means of "forward defense", which is, when translated from pseudo-academic lingo of "specialists" in US security means simply--more money and more interventions. This whole collection of essays is duly noted by Daniel Larison who writes: 

Panetta sets the tone for the document right away: “More than ever, Americans must go abroad to remain secure at home.” This is the interventionists’ axiom from which everything else follows, so it is important to start by explaining how wrong it is. To the extent that American security is threatened by other states and terrorist organizations, a forward policy invites more attacks and challenges and exacerbates the dangers it is supposedly combating. Our militarized engagement in many parts of the world is simultaneously destabilizing and provocative, and it makes us far more enemies than we would have otherwise.    

This is all true but how about we follow my advice from a long time ago and concentrate not on the same old, regurgitated constantly, America' "strategies" which simply do not work--US military record in the last 20 years is abysmal across the board--from technological dimension to operational and strategic ones--but on personalities. Show me any tangible result, any attainment of serious political objective by the United States anywhere, under any conditions, including having sometimes overwhelming material preponderance over American "enemies", many of who are not enemies at all. Right. But then Larison makes a crucial mistake--he begins to "negotiate" with such characters as former national Security Advisor H.R. McMaster or other sinecures' abusers such as Jonathan Schazner or shady pro-Israeli "venture capitalist" as Mark Dubowitz. Larison engages:

Not surprisingly, the consistent misreadings and distortions of history are some of the biggest flaws in the report. Bradley Bowman and Clifford May rattle off historical “facts” about wars throughout history that elide far more than they reveal. For instance, they speak of “Persian-Roman wars” running from the battle of Carrhae between the Roman Republic and the Parthians to the battle of Nineveh in the seventh century between the Byzantines and the Sasanians. That lumps together many different regimes and dynasties in very crude fashion, and it also misleads the reader into thinking that conflict was incessant when it was not.

This is a mistake. Or, rather several mistakes by Larison. 

1. You cannot argue with neocons, or, for that matter with majority of US punditry, but especially neocons, based on the merit of historic facts because:

a) History is not a valid "science", because often it barely can present even a limited number of causalities, which can still be challenged by opponents. If that wouldn't be the case, we wouldn't have had a vibrant and, actually, prospering field of gross revisionism, some of it reaching a full blown grotesque. 

b) For any person with a mildly decent education and being an avid reader it would be not difficult to produce even on the bases of exhaustive research several mutually contradicting narratives on the single event. 

2. So, when even very recent history, well documented and archived, including using modern means of movie documentaries, photographs etc. produces this:

It is down right risible trying to argue about the realities of the events which took place 2000+ years ago with the technologies of spears and bows and arrows and the economy of Roman Empire. Boy, talk about being (ir)relevant in a discussion with people from FDD most of who never saw modern weapon up-close, or, if military as McMaster or Ben Hodges, have a whopping record of military and national security failures. 

If the United States "history" field saw it as totally normal and natural to steal valor from USSR in WW II, I guess even most recent events in which the United States claimed "victory" over ISIS, merely prove my point. Remember? Two years ago:

"We have won against ISIS. We have beaten them and we have beaten them badly," Trump said in a video posted on Twitter Wednesday night. "We have taken back the land and now it's time for our troops to come back home." "Our boys, our young women, our men, they're all coming back," Trump added, expanding on a tweet he sent out earlier in the day. "And they're coming back now. We won. And that's the way we want it. And that's the way they want it."

What "history" are we talking about here? And WHO are those "historians"? McMaster who still cannot resign himself to the fact that the United States sustained humiliating defeat in Vietnam and still tries to "replay" the war? Does he, or Ben Hodges even have a clue on what it means to be under sustained fire impact in real war? I don't think so, as I repeat ad nauseam--no American soldier fought in defense of his motherland. None, zilch, nada. McMaster is altogether a comical figure who apart from commanding a tank regiment against supremely incompetent Iraqi military, has no serious operational experience commanding a division, corps, let alone army or army group. These people are losers primarily on the merit which only matters in issues of polices and actual strategies which work--being a true statesman. Many of them, actually, know or sense this about themselves and that is why they are dealing in Bullshit, not reality. I remind you again--remember my advice? Do not argue with them on the merit, especially of such a propaganda-driven "history" as it is taught in the US--go for ad hominem. Yes, question human, academic and other relevant qualities of people most of who wouldn't qualify in normal country to run a gas station or maintain an apartment block. None of them have any grasp of what will happen to them when their families and livelihood, their country will come under fire. Let's face it--all of them are a small league doctrine-mongers. As I wrote more than three years ago:

I can explain why USA loses its wars and what is a unbridgeable, irreconcilable difference not only between Gerasimov and McMaster but between Russian and American military thinking: US Armed Forces never fought in real defense of their homeland in the last two hundred plus years. Never. Russia does it for millennium. All US warfare is expeditionary in nature with US proper remaining completely oblivious to the realities of the wars it unleashes elsewhere. That it is the reason American soldier inevitably loses an interest and stake in fighting American wars since, in the end, his (her) family at home, his property, everything he (she) loves and treasures remains untouched by brutality of the warfare and other things which come in this terrifying package. Russia and her soldiers and generals (as well as the nation as a whole) think in a completely different plane, because know, on a genetic level, what war can bring to their homeland.

There is no point whatsoever in arguing with those people. Only pointing out to a pathetic state in which the United States resides today, as well as constantly proving those people ignorant on the account of the modern warfare to which US Armed Forces are utterly unprepared and exposing those people's incompetence and corruption, not discussing with them some irrelevant ancient history's minutiae, only then some effect could be achieved. But I don't hold my breath: for starters most of "realist" people in the US suffer from the same historic and military ignorance and, finally, very few of them have courage to admit to themselves that the United States is not this irresistible hegemonic superpower but a country which is in a dramatic, precipitous decline, across the board and no amount of attempts to draw grossly inaccurate parallels to ancient history, not to speak of learning all the wrong lessons, will change the dynamics of global military and economic balance in which the United States finds itself increasingly marginalized, not to speak of being laughed at. The United States got lucky in 1945, it blew it. As for "forward defense", boy--same shit just the view from a different angle.

In related news, Shaposhnikov, meanwhile undergoes trials and shoots good ol' X-35 Uran in the Sea of Japan. Kalibrs, I guess, are next. 

But it is a New Year time and Shoigu opened yesterday a Winter Festival in the park Patriot. It is a joyful and very symbolic occasion against the background of the magnificent main cathedral of Russian Armed Forces.

 

I cannot emphasize enough the powerful symbolism behind all that. Life continues and it is well defended in spirit and weapons.

Trump Needs Some History Update.

Trump, in full accordance to US elites' MO, tweeted, in the wake of assassination of General Soleimani, next:

         Iran never won a war, but never lost a negotiation!

I am not sure what DJT meant by this, but Iran, actually, withstood Saddam Iraq's, supported by half-the-world, onslaught for ten years and that, under the conditions which existed then, was nothing short of military victory. The stream of utter stupidity from top echelon of Washington's power ensued and even Yahoo News was forced to point out:

Earlier Friday, Trump tweeted that “Iran never won a war, but never lost a negotiation!” That was not the conclusion of the U.S. Defense Department’s 1,300-page report on the Iraq war, which was released last year. The study found that Iran was the only winner in the decades-long conflict.

What do ya know. Trump really needs some basic course in military history of the XX-XXI centuries to improve his situational awareness in order to order his minions to stop delivering absolutely delusional statements:

The initial Pentagon statement on the strike said it “was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.” In an interview on CNN Friday morning, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a more urgent explanation, saying the attack headed off an “imminent threat to American lives.” He gave no details. Pompeo said “the world is a much safer place” with Soleimani gone. “I can assure you that Americans in the region are much safer,” Pompeo said.

It is very clear that the "strike" achieved totally opposite aims and one can only guess at this stage what will be Iran's response. There WILL BE a response. Iran is neither Iraq nor Syria, she can defend herself and she can project power in the region. So, at this stage, let's wait and see where this all leads us, but any US involvement in Iran directly can be the end of whatever is left of US power. So much for "safety".

LONDON (AP) — The price of oil surged Friday on concerns that Iran might respond to the killing of its top general by the United States by disrupting global supplies of energy from the Mideast. If sustained, the rise in oil prices could lead to more expensive car fuel, heating and electricity bills, stifling the global economy at a time when it is already slowing. News that Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, was killed in an air attack at the Baghdad international airport prompted expectations of Iranian retaliation.

UPDATE: Oh goodness gracious. If true, we have, indeed, imbeciles running this country. 

A convoy carrying high-profile members of the Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias, was hit by an airstrike while traveling in Baghdad, according to multiple reports.The three-car convoy was struck in the northern outskirts of the Iraqi capital in the district of al-Taji, according to an Iraqi military source cited by Reuters. Six militiamen were reported killed in the attack, with three others critically injured. It remains unclear who carried out the strike.

We'll see what is going on pretty soon. But as Andrei Raevsky reports:

This is also clearly part of the Empire’s anti-Shia strategy.

If it is, indeed, a "strategy", it is not a good one, to put it mildly. But in the end, could it be just Bibi not willing to go to jail?  

UPDATE-2: and why did they want this war for decades? My first book answers this question in full. It is the same reason why the US defeated Nazis alone, simple as that. Exceptional nations do not get humiliated, after all, do we remember how Iran humiliated Jimmy Carter? Not that Ronald Reagan was against it... Do you recall what date hostages were released by Iran? Right.... Reagan's Inauguration Day.