Oh, But That's How ...

 ... Pentagon and a bunch of amateurs with political pseudoscience degrees think. 

Matt Kroenig has wanted the U.S. to attack Iran for more than a decade. Now that he got the war he wanted and it failed, he is reduced to arguing this: 

To be sure, the United States did not register a knockout punch against the Islamic Republic, but to continue the boxing metaphor, it did win on points. 

War isn’t a sport, and there is no winning on “points.” The ghouls that cheered this war on treat war as if it were a video game where you get more “points” with every person you kill or maim. How many “points” did the U.S. get from massacring the innocent schoolgirls in Minab with missiles? If the U.S. won, as Kroenig insists, what did we win? What does the U.S. have now that it didn’t have before?

If anyone has any doubts about this approach (a euphemism for covering up humiliating losses), allow me to remind you this: 

During the Paris Peace talks to end the war in Vietnam, Col. Harry G. Summers Jr. told a North Vietnamese colonel, "You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield." After pondering the remark, the colonel replied: "That may be so. But it is also irrelevant."

This is exactly how the US views WAR. That is why it loses. One-liners such as "victory in war is determined by achieving political objectives of said war" are not enough for making conclusions on matters of strategy and especially so--operations. So, if some uneducated neocon moron who built his career in deep recesses of Pentagon's political fairy tales office, talks like this--know then, he is coping. But then again, US Ivy League humanities degree mills are an insult to real education in history, international relations and ... well, credentialed idiot Kroenig will not understand basic things about war, a real one.  

But That Is What So Good ...

 ... about Trump Admin. Daniel Larison may lament all these threats:

Rubio concluded his first foreign visit as Secretary of State with a not-so-veiled threat against Panama:

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday warned Panama's President Jose Raul Mulino that Washington will "take measures necessary" if Panama does not immediately take steps to end what President Donald Trump sees as China's influence and control over the Panama Canal.

The Panama obsession is a good example of why making rivalry with China the core of U.S. foreign policy is so harmful. The rivalry creates incentives to exaggerate Chinese power and influence to make China seem more menacing than it really is. “Chinese control” of the canal has been invented out of thin air to serve the larger story that China hawks want to tell about Beijing’s ambitions. Trump and the China hawks are fighting shadows of their own creation, and in the process they are doing real harm to U.S. interests in this hemisphere.

But they are not "harmful", they are great because any pretense of morality, "democracy" and "human rights" has been finally dropped. All this nauseating moralizing of Washington is finally exposed for what it is--parasitic imperial aspirations, a geopolitical "realism" at its pinnacle. And this is healthy, because all this post WW II BS finally dissipates. For this we all should be thankful to DJT--he cleared the playing field of any smoke and mirrors, and we know what he wants. Pop-corn time, as well as schadenfreude, a feeling after Tucker Calrson explained to this cretin Pierce Morgan that, as one Russian observer put it, the old Euro "elites" can suck American cock because UK is irrelevant, and the US is now empire. Decrepit, impotent and pretentious but still stronger than London, who, together with Paris, Berlin and Rome, is nothing more than a touristy attraction. Meanwhile, a former UK Interior Minister Suella Braverman explains why UK is essentially over. 

Same applies to France and Germany. 

Biden's "Legacy"...

 ... as is that of the DNC is that of insanity, mass murder, genocide and war crimes. As it is the "legacy" of the US MSM and of the US Congress. Daniel Larison refutes the spin about "salvaging" of Biden's legacy. 

Jonah Blank tries to make the case that Biden can somehow salvage something from the wreckage of his policies in the Middle East:

Biden has so far failed to achieve his highest goals for the Middle East—but in his final days he can single-handedly reset the Israeli-Palestinian equation, preserve the potential for a two-state solution, and rescue much of his tarnished legacy. His status as a lame duck paradoxically gives him the power to do things possible only for a leader whose next step is retirement.

Biden is not going to do any of this. He has already shown that he will spend what little time he has left in office running interference for Netanyahu and letting the Israeli government off the hook for its many crimes. The president’s lame duck status might theoretically free him to do things he wouldn’t normally do, but Biden doesn’t want to do any of those things. To the extent that Biden feels less constrained now that the election is over, he no longer feels any need to pretend that his administration cares about what happens in Gaza. The cynical deadline that Blinken and Austin set before the election came and went, conditions in Gaza keep getting worse because the Israeli government is starving the people to death, and the Biden administration will make no changes to their policy.

There is simply no subject to discuss. Larison refers to Blank's article in Foreign Affairs, a CFR rag for mentally feeble credentialed demagogues who fucked everything up for everybody. 

How Biden Can Salvage Middle East Peace—and His Legacy. A Lame-Duck Agenda to Save Palestinian Lives and Bolster Israel’s Long-Term Security

Biden cannot salvage anything as cannot the combined West--morally, financially and militarily bankrupt.

A Friend Of Mine...

... sent me Daniel Larison's piece at his blog Eunomia where he contemplates economic sanctions. He refers to The Economist piece titled: Are sanctions on Russia working? My friend correctly states and I quote him:"Sanctions are another example of the intellectual bankruptcy of the Western ruling elite. Like a child with a hammer in a room full of glasses and dishware. As you never cease to point out, almost no one in Western top circles has a well-trained mind. Way too many law and business degrees (or worse, in political voodoo science!), with very poor background in math, physics, chemistry and such. They do not understand the energy-material world -- thermodynamics and the importance of those 92 elements." And Larison's piece, while concluding correctly that:

The flaws of broad sanctions have been well-known for a long time, so it wasn’t as if it took imposing them on Russia to recognize their limitations and ineffectiveness. It was entirely foreseeable (and foreseen) that waging economic war on a country as large and powerful as Russia would have adverse consequences for the senders of the sanctions and for the entire world. We know from experience that targets of the harshest sanctions regimes also tend to be the most intransigent, and broad sanctions often backfire and produce more of what they are supposed to discourage. We also know that sanctions usually do not really “work” at all in the sense of changing the target’s behavior in the way that the senders want it to change. Given all that, it should not come as news that the “sanctions weapons has flaws.” The question should be why we continue to use a weapon as blunt and crude as sanctions at all.

Is misplaced and, in fact, is somewhat misleading, because Larison's statement 'It was entirely foreseeable (and foreseen) that waging economic war on a country as large and powerful as Russia would have adverse consequences for the senders of the sanctions and for the entire world', is utterly false. Foreseen by who? If Larison has a short memory, for all my respect for his generally humanist aspirations, facts testify to exactly opposite. The whole Ukrainian "strategy" of the United States and EU since 2013 was and is based on a complete miscalculation and inability to recognize either the scale or power of Russia be that in economic or military terms. The Economist, as well as most of Western publications related to "economic" affairs (Forbes, WSJ et all) have been consistently wrong on "foreseeing" anything and, in fact, played a crucial role in creating an alternative universe narrative on economy of Russia and impact of sanctions. 

As Russians say today, when responding to the question of if economic sanctions work, 'yes, they do--as a boomerang'. But the best example of a systemic failure of Western economic, military, intel or media institutions to "foresee" anything is his very own (I guess he is employed there) Quincy Institute for (allegedly) Responsible Statecraft. Materials published in it re: SMO are the Exhibit A of a complete detachment from the military and economic realities of Russia. If a complete sophomoric delirium about SMO provided there by such "scholars" as Anatol Lieven is understandable, the position of a former cadre officer of the US Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich hardly differs from propaganda being spewed by other US military "experts" such as generals Petraeus or Keane. And that brings us to my position of the last decade at least--the West has a systemic cognitive problem, which, in the end, is a problem of competencies and professionalism. In foreign policy the United States is utterly incompetent because, and I quote Larison himself:

Unfortunately, the U.S. is remarkably bad at understanding these things accurately. This is not just a Trump administration failing. Most American politicians and policymakers routinely misjudge the intentions and goals of our adversaries, and they often invent a fantasy version of the regime in question that leads them astray again and again. One reason for this is that it is simply easier to project our assumptions about what a regime must want than it is to make the effort to see things as they do. Another reason is that many of our politicians and policymakers mistakenly think that if they try to understand an adversary’s views that must somehow mean that they sympathize with the adversary or condone its behavior. Instead of trying to know their enemy, our leaders would prefer not to for fear of being “tainted” by the experience. This lack of knowledge is compounded in some cases by the absence of normal diplomatic relations with the adversary. Our leaders are encouraged to take this self-defeating approach to international problems by a political culture that rewards the people that strike tough-sounding-but-ignorant poses about a problem and marginalizes those that seek to understand it as fully as possible.

And as Larison's "own" Responsible Statecraft outlet exhibits consistently, not only the US is "remarkably bad" in understanding its "adversaries", but truth is--often doesn't know basic facts of real economy, modern warfare, history and diplomacy, but most remarkably, fails to understand its own status, scale and position vis-a-vis the world outside. This huge issue cannot be rectified by mere "rethinking", US machine in producing real statesmen is broken completely and requires a complete removal. It failed miserably to react and adapt to tectonic shifts of modern world and exceptions in "foreseeing" things merely confirm the rule of modern American "elites" being a failure across the board. But then again, what did one expect with "scholars" like Lieven. 

In related sanctions matters, however, this is funny: 

Russia is flaring natural gas at the Portovaya plant near the Finnish border while drastically cutting gas flows via the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany, a Rystad Energy analysis shared with BBC News showed on Friday.  The plant northwest of St. Petersburg is flaring an estimated around $10 million worth of natural gas per day—gas that would have gone to Germany otherwise. 

Aw, poor-poor dears, they cannot sleep knowing that Russia can afford to do so, because Russia is not going to supply her enemies who conduct proxy war against her, and the window is closing fast. This, not to mention the fact that Europe has been written off by Russia, is what really matters. The US is next, but only after some necessary arrangements. 

UPDATE: Michael Hudson, after reading this piece sent to me (initially through Andrei Raevsky) this addendum: 

I have a comment ....about ... column today saying that sanctions don’t work. I think that’s not the point when it comes to U.S. sanctions. Suppose a bully is seen beating up people. Someone tells him, “This won’t change that guy’s behavior.” The bully will reply: “I don’t care. I like to hit people. That’s my philosophy.” I think this is the spirit behind US sanctions.

I agree, it is a philosophy. Especially, as Hudson adds these comments sent to me:

After I wrote it, I thought of some more examples. Take torture. Every country (and religion) has its own signature mode of torture). It’s pretty much known that torture gets false confessions. But nations still do this. Iran under the Shah has a “hot plate,” tying victims to what was a big frying pan and turning on the heat. The US has water boarding. It was pointed out to me that one country was exceptional. Russia simply used sleep deprivation to break down resistance to giving information. Apparently the Americans found that this was simply no fun. It’s like air force generals who like to bomb, and find opportunities everywhere. I’ve known plenty of these guys – and when it comes to Russia, it’s really part of a psychodrama of anger and revenge.

Pay attention to the highlighted conclusion by one of the best economic minds of our generation. He gets it 100%. Remember this? 

Never underestimate the drive to be "the best", when you know you cannot be. The psychodrama unfolds...

A Lesson In Real Realism.

I do follow Daniel Larison's writing periodically and just yesterday he posted a note about ABM Treaty, or rather its abrogation by the United States. In it he notes, correctly: 

The Folly of Leaving the ABM Treaty, 20 Years Later.Withdrawing from the ABM Treaty was an early Bush blunder, but it is one whose costs we continue to pay even now.

In his piece he refers to Mr. James Acton of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (LOL)))  who also laments, not unreasonably, this blunder with ABM Treaty. Acton writes:

It’s clear now that withdrawing was an epic mistake. The United States’ homeland missile defenses are porous; why else would Washington worry that North Korea is deploying intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)? Yet those defenses have succeeded in fueling arms races with Russia, whose hostility toward the United States is alive and well, and now with China too. This experience should prompt Washington to try to negotiate new limits on missile defenses, and it provides a cautionary tale about the very real costs of withdrawing from international agreements. Bush’s central contention was that the treaty “prevents us from developing effective defenses.” He was wrong on two counts. First, the treaty wasn’t the problem. Physics was. And engineering. And program management. And budgets. 

Obviously it is true but another (third) count Acton misses (not surprisingly for a person working for Carnegie Endowment) is the fact that neither Bush and his infested with neocons administration nor other administrations which followed had any clue what they were dealing with. Namely, Russia. Remarkably Larison IS on record about the utter ignorance of the US establishment, both political and what passes in the US for intellectual, on the account of the world outside. But if there is a country which represents a complete caricature in the American elitist mind it is Russia. The other count on which US establishment is ignorant is a real war (I doubt Mr. Acton understands it either) and, more generally, the nature of the conflict on the global scale. It is a cultural issue and most even smart people such as Mr. Acton do have serious difficulties penetrating the depth of it. 

Surely, Acton's background of a physicist makes him somewhat more predisposed to a rational thinking but here too we immediately are reminded that cultural ignorance doesn't spare even Ph.Ds in Theoretical Physics from Cambridge. Acton does admit that what Russia does technologically pretty much nullifies US efforts in ABM defenses but that is far as it goes. For starters, Acton lies, even if he doesn't understand it (which is even more damaging) and I return back to the first quote from him, read attentively:

Yet those defenses have succeeded in fueling arms races with Russia, whose hostility toward the United States is alive and well. 

Judging by the looks of Acton and, especially, the start of his activity as a scientist which falls on the second half of the first decade of 2000s, it is reasonable to assume that he met the collapse of the Soviet Union and immediate consequences of this collapse in 1990s being of a fairly tender age and having zero life experiences and self-awareness to assess times when Russia not only was NOT hostile to the US, but with the incredible energy tuned herself into a door mat for the United States up to the point of self-humiliation. Russians loved and admired the United States and then Yugoslavia happened. He doesn't remember that, I do. So, he lies following a classic BS taught in Anglo-world as a "history", hence his other quote from him.

The tens of billions of dollars that the United States has poured into homeland missile defense since 2001 have proved ineffective, and they have fueled arms races with China and Russia that have undermined U.S. security. President Joe Biden’s administration has sensibly identified arms control as a way to manage these growing dangers. A willingness to negotiate new limits on homeland missile defenses—in return for significant concessions from China and Russia—should be part of its approach.  

Acton does not recognize (he can't) that starting from late 1980s USSR (and then Russia) was surrendering one after another, in an act of unprecedented historically generosity, bordering on folly, her  strategic advantages. Not that the United States didn't benefit from those--the list is very long. And Russia learned her lesson. Mr. Acton, evidently, not, if he ever knew what that lesson was. I am sure he was never taught that in Cambridge--for that you need to attend a serious higher military educational facility. That is why what is highlighted in yellow is preposterous and could be only the product of a person with a white board life experiences and zero foreign policy, military and geopolitical acumen. 

                     LESSON IN REALISM FOR JAMES ACTON:

No normal nation, especially Russia after her experiences with what Pat Buchanan described as:

The Russian people, having extended a hand in friendship and seen it slapped away, cheered the ouster of the accommodating Boris Yeltsin and the arrival of an autocratic strong man who would make Russia respected again. We ourselves prepared the path for Vladimir Putin. 

Would trade any of her growing military-technological advantage over the United States, especially when the United Sates has zero on offer. Not because the US is holding back, but because there is nothing of value, bar general geopolitical favors, to offer in exchange. Because you don't exchange 3M22 Zircon for F-35, you do not trade S-550 or A-235 Nudol for THAAD or AEGIS ashore. Would Acton trade his 2020 Ferrari Pista Coupe (Russians, and other Slavs here, you keep your mouths shut;)) for Chevrolet Citation without cash? Would he trade his Ph.D in Theoretical Physics from Cambridge for AA in creative writing from local community college? The answer seems obvious. Geopolitics is not a charity. But Acton's arrogance and ignorance of the modern history of the last 40 years shows. What can possibly the United States offer to Russia and her people, who observe the American collapse in real time and whose only concern is not to allow the United States and its lap dogs unleash the war in a desperate attempt to hold on to elusive power for a little bit longer. 

Russia's is not trading her military edge, she is using it to keep the combined West within limits until it either sorts itself out or collapses into oblivion but without taking the rest of the humanity with it. But to understand that, one has to know Russia and her history, especially starting from 1812. It is now too late to cry about the fate of ABM Treaty, what is done--is done. Time to face consequences--a concept modern Western elites will learn soon. In fact, the process has already started. Ah yes, I warned 8 years ago that the time to negotiate is now until it is too late and the time of the ultimatums, not concessions, comes. Well, Mr. Acton, that time has arrived and it is not the West which issues them. Because any treaty with the West and its leader, the United States, is not worth the paper it is written on. 

Pepe Escobar, Larison And the State of Contemporary American Oraclism.

Pepe wrote a superb piece on late Zbig and what comes down to an American vast field of geopolitical (on average fraudulent) forecasts at large. In a piece symptomatically titled The Art of Being a Spectacularly Misguided Oracle, Pepe notes:

Over the years, it was always amusing to follow the heights Dr. Zbig would reach with his Russophobia. But then, slowly but surely, he was forced to revise his great expectations. And finally he must have been truly horrified that his perennial Mackinder-style geopolitical fears came to pass – beyond the wildest nightmares. Not only Washington had prevented the emergence of a “peer competitor” in Eurasia, but the competitor is now configured as a strategic partnership between Russia and China.Dr. Zbig was not exactly versed in Chinese matters. His misreading of China may be found in his classic A Geostrategy for Eurasia published in – where else – Foreign Affairs in 1997.

There was nothing unexpected in Zbig's worst nightmares becoming a reality since Zbig was not well-versed not only in Chinese matters, but Russian ones too, not to mention the fact, of which I write non-stop for years, including the latest book, modern geopolitics, or rather what is perceived under this title, has as much in common with purely geography-driven Mackinder's pseudo-science he developed in his The Geographical Pivot of History and, later Democratic Ideals and Reality, as I have genetically with white whales or aliens from planet Zoltar. Here is the deal with all this "geopolitics"-- geography as a function of ranges (distances) and landscape nowadays, say starting circa 1960s, stopped playing a defining role yielding it, finally, to a industrial-technological development of countries which overwhelmingly defines modern "geopolitics".

In Soviet/Russian public schools this "geopolitics" is being taught as a course in Geography, both physical and economic. Here is an example of economic geography exam in Russian schools. This also qualifies to be the part of yet another constituent part of multiplication of pseudo-scientific essences such as Luttwak's introduction of "geoeconomics" being a separate study, as Luttwak insists, from "geopolitics".  So, what was touted in the West as some kind of a separate study and highly vaunted expertise is nothing more than an eclectic approach to primarily an economic geography, history and economics, or those legitimate disciplines' lobotomized bastard child of political "science". And why not? In the academe which counts Queer Studies as a viable academic discipline and Ph.Ds in Gender are bestowed on  people who can barely operate with basic logic, not to speak of vast arrays of complex information, it is absolutely not surprising and only natural, that people of Zbig's or Kissinger's backgrounds would be counted as Oracles, despite them, and many others from a vast cesspool of America's 'geopolitical and political science sinecures, being constantly wrong on pretty much any issue of modern geopolitics and global balance of power. 

Oh, come on, let's face it, the only thing these pseudo-oracles could ever sell was a "reasoning" based on a complete factual BS which was and is treated as a "scientific" fact, while in reality being a figment of imagination of a class of America's fraudulent oracles, whose main task is a development of explanations of why their predictions never become a reality. Ah, those sinecures and pseudo-intellectual magazines serving as Ilf and Petrov once defined as "life-giving springs of remuneration." So, if Zbig, Fukuyama, Kissinger, Huntington or Luttwak never saw their "predictions" to pan out--don't be surprised, I never saw a successful routine appendectomy performed by a local grocery store custodian or even the best electrician from the best local company. Unless, of course, they decided to exchange their 8 years of study and internship in mdeical school for salaries of said custodian or electrician, which under modern conditions may not seem as far fetched. Some good level electricians today make a killing reaching sometimes $90 per hour, and I thought myself about doing this, but then again--I am relatively young and if I need to commit suicide, I have much better alternatives and my body will be still intact, relatively, compared to my sorry ass being turned into the pile of ash, with the only benefit being a free on-sire cremation. But I digress. 

We all need to understand the name of the game--it is wrapping an acute ignorance into the veil of seemingly legitimate and respectable "scientific" verbiage. If predictions do not pan out, who cares. Well, in the United States of the last 30 years no "geopolitical" prediction, there were many of them, panned out precisely because of the American geopolitical Beau Monde being "not versed" in the the main constituent parts of good forecasting: modern real (industrial) economy and warfare. Both require a set of knowledge and skills which are beyond the scope of whatever passes today as "education" in geopolitics in the West. It is all fine and dandy to have an excellent background in economic geography, which is a legitimate field of study, but until one understands the impact of these two on US "foreign policy", one will continue to observe such arguments as Daniel Larison tries to make when addressing a complete neocon moron with Ph.D in "public policy" such as Robert Kagan:

U.S. hegemony was an artifact of a very peculiar period in world history that will never come again, and as we move out of that period we need to adapt our foreign policy strategy accordingly. Kagan and Rasmussen are products of that period and cling desperately to it because it is what they know. They are trying to preserve a U.S. role in the world that no longer makes any sense for the world as it is.

No, Mr. Larison, despite validity of your many points, Kagan, Rassmusen et al, are not just "products of that period". This is not it, I know a truckload of people who are "products of this period", me being one of them. The reason they cling to a myth of America's hegemony is because this is THE ONLY thing which dominates America's geopolitical Parnassus infested with people who are utterly uneducated and cannot possibly grasp a scale of the technological, industrial, scientific and military advances in the last 20 years. Kagan has degree in "public policy" and his loyalties are to Israel, Rassmussen has degree in social studies and was a Prime-Minister of the country, which is smaller than the couple of southern boroughs of Moscow, or St. Petersburg. Even if to imagine that they wanted to move on, which they don't, neoconservative-liberal interventionism is now in a stage four in the United States, they can't. They do not have intellectual wherewithal to do so. Can you imagine this fat ass Kagan studying real Operational Theory or how advanced weapons are designed and produced? Come on, let's be real. Look at the modern Europe today, at its degenerate political and media class, same goes for the United States. 

We literally have "humanities-educated" class running things into the ground. As I state non-stop, I am all eyes and ears, rubbing my hands in anticipation, waiting for America's geopolitical Parnassus to produce a viable argument in favor of "learning historic lessons" from Peloponnese Wars as applied to operations of modern militaries, say in dense ECM-ECCM environment. I bet, this thing has way more profound impact on modern geopolitics, than late Zbig or Fukuyama, or Kissinger ever wrote on anything. As I say non-stop, I am not against humanities studies, they are part and parcel of classic education which we all sorely miss today among Western "elites" who are grotesquely uncultured, despite having access to an expensive Scotch and the best golf-clubs in the world. I am terrified of some "human rights" lawyer or Ph.D in "public policy" getting to the levers of a political power and trying to apply that precious little of value which was taught to him to the world which is so complex that it cannot afford anymore the class of "experts" who cannot predict their next own bowel movement, let alone the global transfiguration unfolding in a front of our own eyes. What we have today in the US is a class of people who, as Pepe correctly states, are spectacularly misguided oracles, who haven't got anything right in decades but who continue to push their own opinions and forecasts which are irredeemable both from academic-scientific and human points of view. Ignorance is not an extenuating circumstance in case of American "geopolitics", which in the last 30 years produced one failure after another thus justifying, directly or by proxy, a massive war crime a rotten Empire has committed trying to extend its self-proclaimed hegemonic life by means of robbery and violence. The accounts will be settled one way or another. But even a broken clock is right twice a day, not American geopolitical "academe".  

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.

Oh, Boy, Oh, Boy!

Just when you think that you repeated that USD and US stock market papers are just virtual "values" which are "worth"... well, let's leave at that for now, enough times to drive point home, news come in which in these strange times take it to eleven. From yesterday (in Russian):

Правительство России разрешило инвестировать средства Фонда национального благосостояния (ФНБ) в национальную валюту и гособлигации Китая.

Translation:  Government of Russia allowed to invest resources of the Fund of National Wealth (FNB) into national currency and state obligations of China.

This is exactly what many of us here discussed very recently, and that means acceleration of the removal of the USD as one of many (yes, Pound Sterling, Euros, Swiss Franks are also there) cash (I stress it--cash, not some BS paper) from Russia's main piggy bank. That also shines a light on the long-term policy of growth of trade between China and Russia and that means, among many other things, dedollarization of the oil trade. Reputable "establishment" Gazeta Ru then proceeds to make this astonishing statement:

Доля европейской валюты в отечественном экспорте в КНР за год выросла с 12% до 45,6%. При этом импорт китайских товаров и услуг в Россию почти на 25% оплачивается в «других валютах». Вероятнее всего, это и есть юани. 

Translation: The share of European currency in domestic (Russia's) export to China grew in one year from 12% to 45.6%. Meanwhile, almost 25% of import of Chinese goods and services in being paid for almost 25%  in "other currencies", which, most likely are Yuans. 

This is what drives many people in the US (like yesterday's Paul Brandus) totally desperate and butt-hurt, because removal of USD in mutual payments between geopolitical players who matter IS the end of the petrodollar. It is a very practical end, without much fanfare--just normal everyday economic activity which is ongoing without employing USD and creating a financial fortress and common Eurasian market whose actual size dwarfs US economy even when this economy is valued by Wall Street  fraudst.... pardon me, exceptionalists. Ah, yes, about exceptionalism. Daniel Larison published today a good piece related to Andrew Bacevich's latest article:  

It Took COVID To Expose the Fraud of ‘American Exceptionalism.’ Our leaders were so preoccupied with remaking the world they failed to see that our country was falling apart around them.

Well, I have a minor quibble with this title, because this fraud was exposed way before any COVID was present. In fact, I launched this blog in 2014 to do precisely this, prior to that I formed opinion on this fraud years before. As I state ad nauseam, American exceptionalism is a self-replicating delusion which is organic to the US body-politic as a main prerequisite of achieving anything on the way to power and money. It is also a main driver behind degeneration of American political and intellectual elites. As Larison observes: 

The more that U.S. policies have proved “American exceptionalism” to be a pernicious myth at odds with reality, the more we have heard the phrase used to defend those policies. Republican hawks began the decade by accusing Obama of not believing in this “exceptionalism,” and some Democratic hawks closed it out by “reclaiming” the idea on behalf of their own discredited foreign policy vision. There may be differences in emphasis between the two camps, but there is a consensus that the U.S. has special rights and privileges that other nations cannot have. That has translated into waging unnecessary wars, assuming excessive overseas burdens, and trampling on the rights of other states, and all the while congratulating ourselves on how virtuous we are for doing all of it.

As the recent events of the 2020 have demonstrated so dramatically--to have some "special rights and privileges" one has to perform across the board, from economy, to military to culture, to society. And, I mean, of course, in real terms not by cooking books, declaring defeats victories and praising social illnesses as achievements. The world is not impressed anymore, not to mention this ever present fact that, as I wrote in my latest book:

Today, the same titanic battle for life on Earth is being waged globally for a new, better, freer, more just and more peaceful global order to emerge. This struggle is not for glory and the sword for forestalling evil has been forged. 

But it will be ultimately up to Americans and America's internal struggles to determine if, she can be, as Larison observes:

American exceptionalism has been the story that our leaders told us to excuse their neglect of America. It is a flattering story, but ultimately it is a vain one that distracts us from protecting our own country and people. We would do well if we put away this boastful fantasy and learned how to live like a normal nation.

One can only hope.      

When Everything Points To...

What Senator Kennedy stated yesterday. 

You know, I am on record that for all my revulsion towards GOP, I consider Democratic Party to be clear and present danger to what's left of the Republic. And yes, I agree with Kennedy that the United States was founded by geniuses and now is run by a bunch of idiots. I am not alone in that, albeit I wrote two books on this issue and write for years about sheer incompetence of US "elites". 

Now Stephen Walt provides this:

A third pillar, however, is broad confidence in U.S. competence. When other countries recognize the United States’ strength, support its aims and believe U.S. officials know what they are doing, they are more likely to follow the United States’ lead. If they doubt its power, its wisdom, or its ability to act effectively, U.S. global influence inevitably erodes. This reaction is entirely understandable: If the United States’ leaders reveal themselves to be incompetent bunglers, why should foreign powers listen to their advice? Having a reputation for competence, in short, can be a critical force multiplier.

As Daniel Larison goes on to observe:

The U.S. has had the luxury of being able to bungle things for decades at relatively low cost to ourselves, but that time is coming to an end. Ever since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been able to make some staggering blunders without significantly compromising its position in the world, but over time all of these blunders have had the cumulative effect of proving that U.S. “leadership” is neither stabilizing nor wise. 

Well, I am really pleased that someone reads my books, but, as was pointed out non-stop--a main formative geopolitical factor which creates crucial conditions for growing of competent national elites, Continental Warfare on a major scale, a conditioning by war that is, is an unknown entity for the United States. Sure, there was a Civil War which devastated primarily South but as I wrote:

Scales and proportions always mattered, still matter and will continue to matter a great deal, especially once warranted comparisons are made. One of the pivotal moments of the American Civil War was Sherman’s burning of Atlanta, which at the time had a population of barely 9,500 inhabitants, that is more than 27 times smaller than Moscow of 1812.  Even Smolensk with its 1812 population of around 13,000, which saw a ferocious battle around it and was set on fire by French artillery, was still considerably larger. In the end, Russia’s population in 1812, which was around 35 million, matched roughly the American population of 1860 which was 31.5 million. Yet, the difference couldn’t be starker—Napoleon attacked Russia with what then was the largest military force in history, which represented much of Western and Eastern Europe. Napoleon’s Grande Armee, which numbered 685,000 troops, had under its banners French, Saxons, Poles, Prussians, Italians, or what Tolstoy called a “force of a dozen European languages or nations.”     

Until things are put into proper context and scale, one will not stop failing in explaining why the United States finds itself today in the state of being de facto ungovernable and with its "elites" which increasingly become the laughing stock around the globe. Larison arrives to this conclusion:

Because the U.S. has been able to get away with making such major blunders, there have not been enough demands for accountability for the policymakers who led the country into one failure after another. There has been no real penalty for costly incompetence, and so many of the same people that led us down the wrong path before are still in positions of influence and authority now. Trump’s election just accelerated the process by putting grossly unqualified yes-men into top positions in government to serve an even more unqualified president. For most of the last twenty years, the U.S. has been poorly led. For at least twelve of those years, we have had presidents who knew nothing and didn’t care to learn more. Administrations that promote ideologues and disparage expertise are bound to be tripped up by obstacles that they fail to see, and they will drive the country into a ditch over and over again while congratulating themselves on their fine steering. 

Here, Larison describes the effect not the main cause--the main cause, and Larison, having a Ph.D in History, should know this is in the fact that US political elite as a whole was never shaped by the realities of Continental Warfare, unlike it is true for the rest of the word. North American Continent, due to it being a "World's Island" was simply spared the scale of a violence which shaped the modern world, including modern West, which carried the seeds of self-destruction inside itself the moment economic and ideological realities of post-WW II Europe became evident. It was, to a very large degree, a reaction, both intellectual and cultural to a life-changing wound sustained in WWII. United States didn't get wounded in WW II--it emerged as the only nation standing in the midst of the global ruin and profited greatly from that. What's not to like? Studs Terkel was correct--it was "The Good War" for America. And, inevitably, wrong lessons have been learned. This is what in the foundation of the American incompetence--wrong lessons, all around. The collapse of the Soviet Union reinforced already grossly distorted American view on history and on its own "liberal model". 

We thought the Cold War vindicated our political system. Instead it only began an age of illusions.

The reinforcement, due to a delusional view of the world and of itself, of American exceptionalism is in the foundation of the modern American incompetence. What Larison describes, including the lack of accountability for non-stop failures, is just the the method of further idiotization of the American "elites" (or government, or political class, what have you) and this process is unstoppable within existing American political, economic, educational, intellectual and cultural paradigm. It is a cold hard fact of life. It is also a fact of practical geopolitics and of the systemic crisis of liberalism. Covid-19? Just an excuse for the economic collapse which started long before the world even heard about this virus and forecasts of the American decline were made based on a much larger number of contributing factors than economy, or what passes for it at the Wall Street, alone.  

Stephen Walt may write whatever he wants on the American future:

Americans will need to rethink a political system that recruits and rewards those who are most adept at selling themselves to the highest bidder. And there has to be something seriously wrong with a political system that has devoted many months and spent billions of dollars preparing for the 2020 election and ends up giving the country a choice between three old white guys. For that matter, Americans ought to rethink whether spending a full year electing someone to a four year term makes any sense at all. No other advanced democracy does it this way. And while we’re at it, let’s scrap the absurd Electoral College, an indefensible relic that systematically disempowers voters in most of the country.

And I don't see anything wrong with "white guys", them being truly old, that is another thing. It is not about the race, it is about competence. Obama was a first black two-term POTUS and it will take some time before competent historians will write a work on a catastrophic impact on the United States Obama Administration had. But here is the problem, the well of the American statesmanship is dry, it was for some time now, because mechanism which produces real leaders is broken and it cannot be fixed without massive, fundamental changes to America's "way of life"--a change America is not ready to implement... yet. The operation is very serious and dangerous and may result in patient dying but without it, the patient is dead anyway.   

UPDATE: Just stumbled upon excellent piece by Paul Craig Roberts. Totally relevant to what is being discussed. 

The only solution for the economy is debt forgiveness for the ordinary people and nationalization for the companies. Trump indicated that aid might be given in the form of an equity stake, and later sell the government’s stake for a profit in a privatization when things return to normal. This would be a partial nationalization. Much better to go whole hog as it allows a cure for concentration and deregulation. The pandemic has made it clear that a society of self-seeking individuals is not a society. A society is a social system. A successful social system is one that can support its members. Once a self-sustaining social system exists, then there is a basis for people to branch out on their own. But without a sustainable social system, there can be nothing. 

Daniel Larison Coins New (For Me) Term.

Daniel Larison, in his "discussion" at the pages of TAC with Brookings Institute own Thomas Wright uses the term "supremacists". Wright, as you can see,  has a lot of "degrees" in all kinds of pseudo-scientific fields, but, as is the case with many people from the American (cess)pool of "strategists", and geopolitical "thinkers", which Larison describes as supremacists, has very little clue about the subject he "tries to make case" on. It is expected from people associated with such pseudo-"scholars" as Robert Kagan or Strobe Talbott--the "stellar" record of "supremacists" (aka exceptionalists, aka neocons etc.) failing to forecast own bowel movements, let alone complex trends in geopolitics is well known. Those guys are not in the business of actual studies, they are in the business of juxtapositioning selected (by far not all) historic, economic and military facts in such a way as to increase the probability of holding on to their "think-tankdom" sinecures. 

Being "supremacist" in D.C. is a cool job, if you can get one, because you get paid handsomely for propagating the most contrived BS which then is fed into the "influence fuel" pipeline of diverse financial, ethnic, religious and political mafias running US so called "foreign policy". Larison thinks that this Wright's assertion requires a serious answer: 

Global retrenchment is fast emerging as the most coherent and ready-made alternative to the United States’ postwar strategy. Yet pursuing it would be a grave mistake. By dissolving U.S. alliances and ending the forward presence of U.S. forces, this strategy would destabilize the regional security orders in Europe and Asia. It would also increase the risk of nuclear proliferation, empower right-wing nationalists in Europe, and aggravate the threat of major-power conflict.This is not to say that U.S. strategy should never change. The United States has regularly increased and decreased its presence around the world as threats have risen and ebbed. 

Larison responds by trying to make a logical case:

Wright’s case deserves a serious answer. He acknowledges that U.S. strategy can change as circumstances allow, and he is willing to entertain some reductions in U.S. involvement in some areas while arguing for more in others. Advocates for restraint believe that more reductions are called for and there is much less need for forward-deployed U.S. forces than Wright takes for granted, but there is some overlap between the two positions. Where we differ is that Wright sees restraint as “the indiscriminate abandonment of a strategy that has served [the U.S.] well for decades” while we would say that it is a carefully considered rejection of a strategy that has outlived its usefulness. Wright agrees with some of the prescriptions that advocates of restraint make. Like us, he believes that the war in Afghanistan should be brought to an end. He says that “the United States should also impose new limits and conditions on its alliances with many authoritarian states.” Among other things, that means reassessing the relationship with the Saudis and cutting off support for the war on Yemen. But in the end, he concludes that significantly reducing U.S. involvement and commitments across the board is misguided. 

I mentioned logical, that doesn't mean that it is knowledgeable. I, certainly, can make explanation of my weird night dreams as "logical", such as why I fly in the air and why I do not kill myself when falling from the skyscraper--there is a logic in that, it is just that it is not of this, real, world, but of dreams. The phrase highlighted in yellow is what is the most peculiar about this response. Immediate question is: what circumstances and how they allow. This is not being petty and neat-picking, it is about understanding of the emergence of modern American exceptionalism in the immediate aftermath of the WW II. Wrong lessons were learned about circumstances and the essence of the American "supremacy". I like Atkinson's characterization of Patton (a rather run-of-the mill WW II general, who was extolled in US as a "genius" who he never was):

The creeping arrogance, the hubris, which would cost the American Army so dearly in Vietnam. Summing up the achievements of his troops in crushing the German counterattack of December 1944, Patton with pardonable pride claims to have “moved farther and faster and engaged more divisions in less time than any other army in the history of the United States—possibly in the history of the world... No country can stand against such an Army.” These memoirs are valuable not least in showing, however unwittingly, that a disastrous presumption of invincibility took root in the ranks of officers who led the American military after World War II. 

Should Atkinson book have been written today, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, among many others, would have been added to the list of the American geopolitical disasters, which all, without exception, starting from inability to win in Korea are marked by the common feature of sheer ignorance, arrogance and, in fact, total inability to give any sensible account of existing circumstances. The only circumstances which ever led to a "change" in those ever illusive coherent American strategies after WW II were circumstances of sustaining an outright military defeat or inability to competently prosecute and win any war, period. Here is the story of the United States "strategies" and of "change":

It is a story of "foreign policy" based on inability to process even basic facts about the outside world which DO constitute those very "circumstances" to which the United States can only REACT and has no record whatsoever of having ANY coherent realistic foreign policy because none can exist in the echo-chamber of mostly wacky, wishful thinking "concepts" of the surrounding world. Moreover, it cannot exist within environment--be that US think-tankdom or any other official institutions--where there is absolutely no understanding of the nature and application of the power, especially military one. General Latiff of RAND states plainly that this cannot exist among people who draw those ideas from entertainment.         

Make no mistake: the willful ignorance of the American public and its leaders will have dangerous consequences. Most Americans, including many of our political leaders, pay scant attention to military issues until a situation arises concerning our armed forces. Then they act based on emotion and political expedience rather than on facts, and that rarely ends well. 

Let's put it even more bluntly: the idea that some US bureaucrat with mostly humanities education can produce something of intellectual value when discussing power component of geopolitics is down right preposterous--overwhelming empirical evidence of the US foreign policy establishment's utter ignorance on this issue is available to anyone who wants to see. In fact, not only it is the evidence of ignorance, it is a testimony to a complete irrationality and rejection of these very same "circumstances" which, finally, turned the United States into what essentially amounts to a bankrupt rogue state with nuclear weapons. Slight deviations from suicidal fanatical exceptionalist world-view in the US, once one begins to view history from the point of life-span of nation-states, are in no way indicative of ANY change, even among many "realists" and "restrainsionists" who differ with their neocon white-board pseudo-academic brethren only on a tactical level without changing their outlook on the United States as a real democracy and God's gift to the world. 

Yes, Larison tries to be logical when speaking of Russia and China and tries to be factual when states:

The U.S. has enjoyed almost unchecked primacy for at least the last 30 years, and in that time the U.S. has caused or contributed to the destabilization of at least half a dozen countries and fueled conflicts that have killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions. During that same period, the U.S. has wasted trillions of dollars and lost thousands of lives in pointless wars that haven’t made the U.S. more secure. If this is a strategy that has served us well, I would like to know what a failed strategy looks like.  

But as was established: Washington establishment doesn't change, because it doesn't learn--it is not capable to do so, because the foundation, of knowledge and causality, to sound strategies and policies has been removed completely from US "international studies" programs. And while Larison makes a valid tactical point, does he understand that it is not the issue of "strategy" or circumstances--it is the issue of the nature of modern post-WW II United States with its folie de grandeur taken to the psychiatric extreme which are in the foundation of the American decline. The unfolding recognition that there is something rotten in the self-proclaimed shining city on the hill, is too little too late, even when is declared by the people who are largely responsible for that. And even admissions by inventor of a hollow pseudo-scholastic meme of Thucydides Gap, Graham Allison change absolutely nothing: 

The New Spheres of Influence. Sharing the Globe With Other Great Powers

They change absolutely nothing because these are precisely representatives of this US "foreign policy" establishment who not only have no clue about the world outside, as bad as it is, they lack even a basic concept of the actual strength of their own country, the United States that is, because none of them is taught how to correctly assess it, least of all in military sphere. Yes, I may agree with Larison that:

Wright accepts the need for a “selective retrenchment.” Advocates of restraint are convinced that the U.S. can and should reduce our military involvement overseas even more, because we see the current level of U.S. involvement as both unnecessary and undesirable. Wright is correct to say that the U.S. “should be more selective as it safeguards its interests,” but he does not go far enough. Our European and Asian allies are the ones that are best prepared and capable to provide for their own security, and the U.S. has discouraged them from doing this to preserve an illusion of our own “indispensability.” It is long past time that we encouraged them to take up their responsibilities for regional security after having carried that burden for more than seventy years.  

I do, however, have couple reservations on that. Retrenchment is defined as the act of retrenching; a cutting down or off, as by the reduction of expenses. It is not going to help, even if to assume that Trump Administration succeeds in part in doing this. It is too late for that, because the problem is deeper and systemic on a historic scale. It is the car engine which is broken, not the driver who's got sick, and that is what neither "supremacists" nor "realists" can understand. The question is not about "retrenchment", especially when one understands that the United States has neither resources nor viable doctrine to fight conventionally even near-peer and win, not to speak of great powers such as China or Russia, no--the issue today is will the United States preserve itself as a viable state without imploding into the ethnic violence and economic collapse which even Wall Street-trained shysters from economy cannot hide anymore. The statistics is out there:

And it is not encouraging, to put it mildly. 

Retrenching will not change America's fates much, addressing catastrophic structural deformities brought on by suicidal domestic and foreign policies, may. In this sense, the United States may be an exceptional nation, exceptional in a sense of blowing two historic opportunities handed to it by providence, once after the WW II, and then, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, in a manner and with degree of hubris in a historically short time, instance, really, seldom recorded in human history. I don't think the United States wants this kind of exceptional distinction. For me, however, it is a painful personal journey, seeing the country me and my family love as our home, disintegrating in a front of our eyes into chaos and insolvency precisely because those who run it (into the ground) have no understanding of circumstances and cannot react, forget being proactive, to them by taking necessary steps to arrest this dangerous collapse. Are they even capable of that? I don't think so, no matter the scale of tactical differences between "supremacists" and "realists". As I predicted more than 5 years ago, yes, I am doing it again:

Explaining to American "elite" the fact that US didn't "win" the WW II, that "winning" the Cold War came about because Soviet people simply decided to end it, that Wall Street "economy" has no relation to real economy and that real wars produce misery and destruction on a scale which is incomprehensible for the "populace" of the Washington D.C. "strategists", it is not just difficult--it is next to impossible. So, the events must run the course. But it is already clear that by failing to achieve any sensible political objectives in Ukraine and in Russia, and, by this, starting a massive global re-alignment, the United States sustained a defeat. What will be the consequences of this defeat? I hate to speculate, I just know that they are already big and that the moment of facing the reality is coming. My suggestion to those who are still making decisions--open and start reading  War And Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I don't hold my breath, though. The moment US handlers of their Kiev puppets conceived that Ukrainian Army can "win" in Donbass, the stopwatch started.   

Tik tok, tik tok, tik tok...the reality is finally here.