About Angst.

Thanks to Thomas Malthaus providing link to Mr. Bhadrakumar's piece, symptomatically called Biden’s existential angst in Ukraine. As is expected, Bhadrakumar's piece revolves largely around the article in WaPo by Robert Gates and Condoleezza Rice titled Time Is Not on Ukraine’s Side. As is the case with many policy "pieces" in the United States it is written by people who fucked it up big time one way or another in their distinguished careers. Robert Gates, being a smart man, had his own delusions on the matters he was dealing with during his tenure as the head of CIA, Secretary of the State and SecDef. In the end, I remember his public speaking in 1996-97 (IIRC) at the Seattle's Madison Mayflower Hotel conference where he didn't understand that his threats to choke financially Yeltsin's Russia were a highly desirable act for those forces in Russia which, in the end, came to power due to US and NATO criminal idea to gang-bang Serbia in 1999. 

But that is common for the majority of America's graduates of Soviet/Russian Studies field--to exercise illusion that they know what Russian people want, based on communicating with circles of people in Russia who tell those graduates, from CIA's chief to such "scholars" like Michael McFaul, what they want to hear. That's the MO of the US "Intelligence Community". And whilst Rice and Gates' piece is sober and grim (for 404 and US hegemony) there is also a tacit recognition of the strategic realities on the ground. Here is what Bhadrakumar points out which is crucial:

Rice and Gates indirectly acknowledge that Russia is on a winning streak, contrary to the western triumphalist narrative so far. Evidently, the expected Russian offensive ahead is rattling their nerves... Pentagon is unsure of Surovikin’s future strategy. From what they know of his brilliant success in evicting NATO officers from Syria’s Aleppo in 2016, siege and attrition war are Surovikin’s forte. But one never knows. A steady Russian build-up in Belarus is underway. The S-400 and Iskander missile systems have been deployed there. A NATO (Polish) attack on Belarus is no longer realistic. 

And here is the issue. Pentagon CANNOT be sure of any strategy of Surovikin, because they cannot be sure of a larger geopolitical strategy of Kremlin which is surrounded by fog deliberately and if there is one thing neither Pentagon nor higher-ups in US policy-making establishment ever followed is what Alexander Svechin wrote in his "Strategy" almost 100 year ago--"Each war represents an isolated case, requiring an understanding of its own particular logic, its own unique character." Yes, it is that simple, yet, it seems, so beyond the reach of the US policy-makers other than self-evident platitudes that Ukraine is merely a pawn in a huge game designed to finish off self-proclaimed US hegemony and that Russia was at this game since at least 2007. 

One of the hall-marks of this game is a practical maintenance by Russia of escalation dominance on the battlefield and her ability to employ it tactically and operationally in dozes required to achieve political objectives, and, in this case, whatever Surovikin did in Syria is not sufficient for application to this proverbial Svechin's "isolated case", because the war is different than it was in Syria. And it is different dramatically in its scale, scope and final objective. This is precisely the thing they cannot wrap their brains around in Washington and it merely confirms the American tradition to lose her wars, ranging from Vietnam to Afghanistan, due to inability to recognize the nature of the conflict and due to sheer ignorance of the enemy the US fights. 

So, here we are, speaking about rather simple things, in theory, but which are so difficult to attain in practice. As per doctrinal, policy and strategy chaos in Washington--old news. It was like this since 9/11 with armies of neocon and American "exceptionalists" shysters pushing for a complete remake of the world order without giving a cognizance to a simple fact that America they thought they knew, let alone the world at large, had very little to do with their own perceptions. I will try to talk about it tomorrow in depth in video. In related news:

Newly elected US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reportedly won over the final few votes needed to secure the gavel by promising conservative lawmakers that he will help pass legislation that would limit future economic and military aid to Ukraine.    

We'll see about that. Every laundromat eventually gets broken, or gets new management. Per Kissinger... LOL)) Neutrality for 404, no shit, genius...