How The World At Large Sees Things.

The speed with which Washington deligitimizes the remnants of the West's institutions is astonishing. It also explains what REAL influence Russia and her SMO provide on the rest of the world. 

As part of the new payment system launched last year, Indonesian President Joko Widodo called on Wednesday for his country to abandon the use of foreign payment networks like MasterCard and Visa and encouraged the public to adopt credit cards made by domestic banks. At a local business gathering, Widodo emphasized that "everyone [in Indonesia] should be able to use" Indonesian-manufactured credit cards so that "we can be independent," as he explained that the aim is to avoid risking transactions in case of a geopolitical disruption that could economically affect the country. According to the president, the initiative "shows that Indonesia is following the pace of digital technology transformation in the economic sector." "Be very careful. We must remember the sanctions imposed by the US on Russia. Visa and Mastercard could be a problem," he warned. 

We need to check now if Indonesia has human rights abuses, enough "democracy", or has WMD, wink, wink. Though, after what NATO saw in 404 with Russia fighting there with one left hand, I doubt they have any desire to get into the nation with population of  270 million and do the Island Hopping. But here is just one of very many signs of a global tectonic shift in perception of the West and the obvious fact, which some of our friends pointed out on discussion board about Xi's visit, I believe (correct, please, if I am mistaken), that most of the global South views current situation as Russia standing alone against combined West. This, rather well established, fact also contradicts somewhat Ischenko's latest piece about the thrust of Chinese initiatives, because the image of Russia standing alone and the rest of the global South only now beginning to wake up is firmly imprinted in the public opinion around the globe. 

China's initiatives, as well as Xi's visit to Moscow, apart from obvious huge practical significance for both sides and, by extension, for BRICS, serves also a good ol' truism, attributed to JFK, that "victory has hundred fathers, while defeat is always an orphan". But here is where Ischenko makes a mistake, no matter the spin, one obvious fact cannot be obfuscated in SMO--these are Russian Armed Forces alone who face down NATO's proxy and very real actual forces and do it extremely well. Larry wrote about it yesterday (see the link to his blog), and while the eyes of media are concentrated on the slaughter of VSU and NATO's "volunteers" at Bakhmut, elsewhere Russian forces advance steadily and the new cauldron is forming around Avdeevka. 

As SMO demonstrated fully--the fact which many observers, including Ischenko fail to grasp--political-diplomatic dances are not substitution for the practical military results achieved by people who fight. Especially in the realities of the warfare of the 21st century. Quoting Den Xiaoping: "diplomacy is the extension of the war by other, peaceful means". There is NO issue here about who was first, the egg or the chicken; conflict, war decides issues, sorry to upset those who think otherwise. But here we get into the intricacies of the modern war and its realities which many political scientists fail to grasp and continue to apply beaten to death outdated cliches in the world which observes events in the real time. Below is the demonstration of the political "science" meeting warfare realities in SMO.

I can only go so far in explaining an abyss of a difference between Captain Lepic's report to higher command on August 31, 1914 about German columns making a surprise turn from Estre-St. Denis to Compiegne and 80 hours which passed before French started to react to it, and between 2023 ISR in SMO allowing real time operational planning, developing command decisions and obtaining targeting. Same abyss which separates events of August 31, 1914 from events of 2023 strategically and operationally, separates old views on geopolitics and diplomacy from geopolitical realities of our time. There is a reason many Russian civilian leaders are educated in the Academy of General Staff. The faster people understand that, the better will be their level of awareness and preparedness. And I mentioned only one profound difference among very many--a list too long to post here. In the end, recall this:

   

I wrote it on purpose and warned. Much of it came true.