Victory Has Many Fathers...

... defeat is always an orphan. In related news: LOL))) 

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden's administration on Thursday laid the blame on his predecessor, President Donald Trump, for the deadly and chaotic 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan that brought about some of the darkest moments of Biden’s presidency. The White House publicly released a 12-page summary of the results of the so-called “ hotwash ” of U.S. policies around the ending of the nation's longest war, taking little responsibility for its own actions and asserting that Biden was “severely constrained” by Trump’s decisions. It does acknowledge that the evacuation of Americans and allies from Afghanistan should have started sooner, but blames the delays on the Afghan government and military, and on U.S. military and intelligence community assessments. The brief document was drafted by the National Security Council, rather than by an independent entity, with input from Biden himself. The administration said detailed reviews conducted by the State Department and the Pentagon, which the White House said would be transmitted privately to Congress on Thursday, were highly classified and would not be released publicly.

This is, my friends, how political and governing institutions cease functioning being preoccupied with own "survival". Boy, how I recognize this from 35 years ago, but in a different country and under different circumstances. Still, a total recall, and a coward and impotent, surrounded by a coterie of sycophants and agents of influence, as a head of the nation, while having no clue and blaming the others before him. While the alcoholic and power-hungry low life waits in the wings. Comparison is warranted.   

Getting The Time Scale Right-I

For us, humans, our time zone, or horizon, if one wishes, within which we live with the illusion of understanding this world, is usually 40-50 years, not counting roughly first 20 years of our youth, the time when we generally don't give a damn. After those 40-50 years, the march to wisdom and profundity is usually interrupted by the breaks for taking Metamucil, visits to general surgeons, colonoscopies and trying to remember some inconsequential shit, like what was the name of your political economy professor in naval academy or what is the fucking password to your credit card on-line account, which seemed so easy to remember first 5-6 hours and which mysteriously evaporated into the vastness of your brain's neurons without a trace after a couple of weeks. But that is us, humans. States and nations have different time scales and those are measured in many decades, centuries and even millennia. Reconciling our personal human times scales with those of the nations is, realistically, a tall order. Our experiences simply oscillate with different frequencies. 

Why it is important. Paul Robinson wrote a piece on Gorbachev and collapse of the USSR. 

Almost nobody in Russia celebrates the collapse of the USSR. Now, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev – a man who gets much of the credit in the West but is generally poorly judged back – home is trying to defend his legacy. Speaking this week, the one-time leader admitted mistakes were made during his time in office, but maintained that his policy of perestroika – the restructuring of the crisis-hit superpower – was the right thing to do. Those criticizing the plan “have either forgotten or don’t want to remember what the moral and psychological situation in Soviet society was like by 1985 … The country was sinking deeper into stagnation. Economic growth had virtually stopped,” he said. What destroyed the USSR wasn’t perestroika, says Gorbachev. Rather, it was the communist hardliners who mounted a failed coup against him in August 1991 – a move that torched the Union Treaty Gorbachev had drawn up to redefine the way the USSR was managed.

Gorbachev, as usual, lies in describing the reasons for Soviet collapse and to Robinson's greatest credit he challenges this assertion. 

In short, the ex-leader is right that the Soviet Union was in need of reform, but wrong to say that the country’s collapse was not his fault. Reform could have taken many directions. The one he chose was catastrophic. At the same time, Gorbachev isn’t wrong to blame others, either.

Read the whole piece by Robinson, especially a short expose' of Gorbachev's classlessness and vapidity. In general, the Soviet collapse was an enormously complex phenomenon, in which the nationalism issue and Soviet elite's large segment desire to integrate with the combined West played one of the most important roles in disintegration of the USSR. Yet, after 30 years since the Soviet collapse one has to accept the fact, that Putin's assertion, that those who do not miss the USSR have no heart, those who want to restore it have no brains, is spot on. The reason I bring it up is because I always knew, since the early childhood, that Russia, as the core of the Soviet Union was a main donor of Soviet national fringes, from highly developed Ukraine to paying bills for Trans-Caucasus republics with the exception of oil-rich Azerbaijan, but especially so for the whole of Middle Asia, where major programs of industrialization and agricultural development have been implemented in post-WW II period. Needless to say, much of those efforts were at the expense of historic Russia. 

Very few Russian localities embodied this Russia's "sponsorship" of national Soviet fringes better than the famous "city of brides" (it had also, other, much less appropriate handle) and center of Soviet textile industry, the city of Ivanovo. My late father hailed from that locality and till recently, Ivanovo served as an Exhibit A of Central Soviet Russia's problems in which gray drabness, dirt, worn out infrastructure, lack of investment, social ills were a direct result of Russia working hard to maintain USSR in the working order. Today, however, very few people in Russia want any kind of "union" with former Soviet republics and explanation for this attitude is extremely simple--investments got reoriented inside Russia and even such, frankly, a shithole of a city as Ivanovo was, started to get, no, no, don't expect from me beaten to death cliche about a "facelift", this is not a "facelift", this is a deep surgery to save the patient's life. Believe me, if Ivanovo looked bad in 2011, I can tell you that it looked even worse in 1985, let alone 1995. But here we are in 2020 (the time of video shoot). 

You can see how life reclaims this 16th century Russian city and how it turns into a place where it is pleasant to be. Ivanovo together with many central Russian cities and towns simply stopped being shitholes. Some of them, like ancient Ryazan, have become top-notch tourist destinations and will never be used in a pejorative sense when "Ryazanskiy" would mean often a low-brow, low taste, primitive Russian-derived. Especially since Ryasan Higher Paratroop Military Academy is located there. Ryazan today is a first-class city. Ryazan's population is growing. Historic, Central Russia is becoming unrecognizable in the best meaning of this words. Do you think Russians want the USSR back? Think again. Think also about reasons all those former "brotherly" people from now independent states of former USSR assault Russia's borders trying to get inside Russia to become Russia's "Mexicans". Right. Would I have thought about such a situation in 1985 or even in 2005? Nope. 

But this is precisely the case when picture is worth a thousand words. But here is the catch--this all would have never be possible if not for a tremendous industrial acceleration Soviet system provided for historic Russia in the 20th century, even when considering a profoundly harmful, for Russia and her people, distortions of Soviet internationalist ideology which afforded the development, now largely rolled back, of USSR's national republics at the expense of Russia. Yet, I mentioned Gorbachev and Robinson's piece for a reason, especially when related to Gorbachev and his late wife's preference of spending many of their vacations abroad, especially in Italy, when Gorbachev was still just a member of Central Committee and was enjoying his and Raisa's drives in rented car in the middle of the capitalist West. It was then that his idiotic ideas of catastrophic reforms were born, not least through the influence of his domineering wife, and we all know where it all ended--a demographic, economic and political catastrophe Russian people had to endure, especially when at Gorbachev's coming USSR was winning the arms race against the United States. 

I am on record--the history of the Cold War 1.0 IS NOT written yet. And I mean real history not propaganda which was succinctly defined by George F. Kenna when he wrote:

What did the greatest damage was not our military preparations themselves, some of which (not all) were prudent and justifiable. It was rather the unnecessarily belligerent and threatening tone in which many of them were publicly carried forward. For this, both Democrats and Republicans have a share of the blame. Nobody -- no country, no party, no person -- "won" the cold war. It was a long and costly political rivalry, fueled on both sides by unreal and exaggerated estimates of the intentions and strength of the other party. It greatly overstrained the economic resources of both countries, leaving both, by the end of the 1980's, confronted with heavy financial, social and, in the case of the Russians, political problems that neither had anticipated and for which neither was fully prepared.         

This issue needs to be addressed, because  without addressing it, there is NO rational explanation to the current events in the world and many, still many, wrong conclusions and estimates making it into the public sphere, obfuscating the answer to a burning question of geopolitical stability and global peace...

To Be Continued...

You Get Gorbachev Only Once a Century.

Or even millennium. Cowardly, very narrow-minded and hollow. He is, certainly, one of the most outstanding dumbfvcks in history who managed to destroy his country, granted it needed some changes, and who became an embodiment of human incompetence. Despite leading Soviet scientists and military people telling him that Strategic Defense Initiative (aka Star Wars) was mostly smoke and mirrors, Gorbachev and his cabal of "reformers" decided that they can use SDI as one of the excuses for entering negotiations with the United States on matters of Strategic Arms Limitations, Anti-Missile Defense and humiliating and grossly disadvantageous for USSR INF Treaty which was presented by Gorbachev as an "achievement", when in reality it was nothing more than surrendering already emerging decisive Soviet advantage across the whole spectrum of weapon systems. The problem, of course, was the fact that Gorbachev being a door mat for his late wife and being a stubborn village jackass, wouldn't know the difference between shit and shinola, nor could recognize, despite multiple warnings, that he was played as a preschooler by the West.  

Gorbachev was dealing with cartoons and a lot of speeches ABOUT SDI, while having under his command what already then was becoming not only the best Air Defense system in the world but some of the most advanced and breakthrough technologies in both weapon systems and their enablers. But the guy was a moron with agenda and he, probably, wasn't that disposed against being duped to start with. He had a "plan" and we all know how well it worked... for the West. But time never stands still and tables tend to be turned once in a while. Obviously SDI turned out to be nothing more than a PR trick and once the heritage of tractorist Gorbachev and alcoholic Yeltsin was dealt with, new strategic and technological reality begun to emerge, being the sum of all things described above and more, not least a complete loss by Russia and Russians of any trust to a combined West. All this resulted in Russia declaring a new era of warfare and of global balance of power shift on March 1, 2018.  I wasn't melodramatic or driven by pathos when wrote then:

I don't want to sound dramatic and I knew that there were and are always surprises in Soviet/Russian weapons but today's revelations from the highest podium in Russia about Kinzhal were shocking. The balance of power just shifted dramatically, with it the naval warfare as we knew it is no more. It is OVER!    

As it turned out, I haven't been dramatic enough. I did, however, predict already then that the new task of the United States in a face of a radical shift in power balance will be to mount a concerted effort to drag Russia at the negotiating table and try to push as many of new Russian weaponry as possible under the umbrella of one or another type of the treaty, which should mitigate somewhat a strategic catastrophe (from the Western point of view) which real revolution in military affairs brought about. First Russian-America meeting on strategic stability took place yesterday and voila'. As Interfacx reports:

Москва. 29 июля. ИНТЕРФАКС - Москва готова обсуждать с Вашингтоном свои новейшие системы вооружений, включая "Кинжал" и "Посейдон", но не видит оснований для постановки вопроса о потенциальном ограничении возможностей России в этой сфере, заявил "Интерфаксу" в четверг замглавы МИД РФ Сергей Рябков. "Для американцев эта тема представляет интерес, мы, естественно, от разговора не уходим. Суть нашей позиции в данном вопросе: для постановки вопроса в такой плоскости, а именно потенциального ограничения наших возможностей в сфере этих новейших систем, никаких оснований нет. Мы все уже давно объяснили американцам, какие из наших новейших систем подпадают под действие продленного в феврале ДСНВ. Когда эти наши системы будут ставиться на боевое дежурство, мы, разумеется, будем действовать в полном соответствии с требованием договора, в этом нет никаких сомнений", - сказал он, отвечая, в частности, на вопрос, обсуждались ли российские новейшие системы вооружений на переговорах в Женеве.

Translation:  Moscow. July 29. INTERFAX - Moscow is ready to discuss with Washington its latest weapons systems, including the Dagger (Kinzhal) and Poseidon, but sees no reason to raise the issue of a potential limitation of Russia's capabilities in this area, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Interfax on Thursday. "For the Americans, this topic is of interest, we, of course, do not avoid this conversation. The essence of our position on this issue: there are no grounds for bringing this issue in this plane, namely the potential limitation of our capabilities in the field of these new systems. We already explained to the Americans long ago which of our newest systems are subject to the START Treaty extended in February. When these systems of ours are put on alert, we, of course, will act in full compliance with the requirements of the treaty, there is no doubt about that, "he said , answering, in particular, the question whether the Russian advanced weapons systems were discussed at the talks in Geneva.

In other words. you want to talk about those systems? Sure, let's talk, but we are not putting, say, Kinzhal up for negotiations and the United States has practically nothing to offer in return to start with. Sure, there is the issue of anti-missile "defense" in Europe, but it is not the "defense" part which worries Russia, because the West has no systems which can intercept even meaningful part of Russia's missile salvo. The issue are MK-41s VLS which can accommodate TLAMs. Simple as that, but even if to imagine that the United States will be ready to bargain, neither Kinzhal nor Poseidon are "strategic" weapons in a traditional sense. Neither are Tomahawks, BTW. But let's cut all Bullshit and face the reality. Of course, Kinzhal even when carries a conventional warhead, can shift military balance in any theater of operations as fast as the first half-squadron (6-8) of MiG-31Ks could be deployed there, which is the matter of hours, half-a-day tops. Soon all military districts and fleets will have their own squadrons of those; then, the time is cut to a half-hour before on duty "couple" gets airborne. After that ANY surface fleet of any configuration which is within 3,000 kilometer radius of those MiG-31Ks, forget about TU-22M3(M) (that could be an overkill, with each of them carrying 2-3 Kinzhals), has nothing left to do but disperse and hope not to be near capital ships, such as DDGs and CVNs. 

Ryabkov's words in conclusion speak volumes: 

"Мы будем прежде всего заботиться о том, чтобы мы гарантированно были защищены от любой агрессии со стороны любого потенциального противника, включая США, а уже потом, когда мы будем иметь стопроцентные гарантии в этой сфере (сейчас они есть, но их нужно поддерживать на должном уровне дальше), уже потом мы будем смотреть, возможно что-то дальше, невозможно...это вопрос открытый, он очень сложный, и в любом случае США должны понимать, что никаких односторонних уступок, никаких просто шагов навстречу им, просто их пожеланиям без готовности США идти на компромисс, учитывать наши интересы, наши озабоченности в разных сферах, связанных с тем, что США проводят в плане развития собственной военной организации, создания новых систем, появления их в разных регионах, - без этого ничего у них не получится с точки зрения "постановки под контроль" наших новейших систем вооружений", - сказал высокопоставленный российский дипломат.

Translation:  "First of all, we will make sure that we are guaranteed to be protected from any aggression from any potential enemy, including the United States, and only then, when we have one hundred percent guarantees in this area (now they are, but they need to be supported at proper level further), only then will we look, at a possibility of something further down the road... this is an open question, it is very difficult, and in any case, the United States should understand that there are no unilateral concessions, no simple steps towards them, just their wishes without the willingness of the United States to compromise, to take into account our interests, our concerns in various areas related to what the United States is doing in terms of developing its own military organization, creating new systems, and their appearance in different regions - without this they will not succeed with the point of view of "putting under control" our latest weapons systems, "said a senior Russian diplomat.

In diplomatic language it is called "fvck off". Russians are damn aware of what is coming next for Russia's Ministry of Defense, and considering today's contract for the first 10 battalions of S-500s signed, with first battalions being deployed in early 2022 (in Russian), we may only guess what is in works. Newest Yasen M-class Krasnoyarsk will be floated out tomorrow (yes, I know, it is The National Interest):

Russia's New Yasen-Class Submarine Is Here and It Looks Fierce. Yasen-M’s arsenal will be headlined by Russia’s new 3M22 Tsirkon winged anti-ship hypersonic cruise missile, which has a top speed of up to Mach 9 and is capable of performing mid-flight evasive maneuvers.

Now they are talking about the new generation of Peresvet laser-weapons coming soon and it is also clearly stated that navalized version of S-500 is in works and I can bet my ass on this thing being installed on Peter the Great during his (her) upcoming modernization. The only real subject of negotiations today regarding genuine strategic weapons are RS-28 Sarmat and Avangard and only in terms of some (emphasis--SOME) limitation on their deployed numbers and, as you may have guessed it already, IF Russia will discuss those, the price for the American side will be very steep. Because unlike Strategic Defense Initiative, these Russian weapons are not cartoons and PR-tricks. Those are already on combat duty or in IOC and if I would have been asked to characterize those people who run Russia today in two words, my characterization would have been: not Gorbachev. And really, how often you get a leader of a nuclear superpower who is a complete moron and a door mat. Once a century? 

The Irony.

History, life in general, could be ironic alternating between the dark and lighter side. But when Ronald Reagan's adviser on Russia and unofficial Reagan's personal envoy to Gorbachev Suzanne Massie asks, while live on TV (NTV), Vladimir Putin for Russian citizenship, one should really start questioning the reality of modern West. Massie is not your average citizen, she never was. She was a crucial player in convincing Ronald Reagan that USSR was not really the "evil empire" and she shuttled between Reagan and Gorbachev (often unknown for D.C. establishment) trying to arrange the end of the Cold War.

The response from Kremlin, so far, was understandably restrained with Peskov merely stating (in Russian) that there are "certain bureaucratic procedures" which must be followed. I am sure, in the end, Massie will get her citizenship and she is too public of a figure not just in Russian-American but global politics to be subjected to the full process, including an obvious consideration of her age. She just wants to stay in Russia and wants to play her part in the drama which unfolds between the United States and Russia. She is very vocal about the state of modern United States and doesn't like Biden and calls him a marionette and calls D.C. a swamp. Today, in Moscow, she drinks vodka, celebrating 35th Anniversary of the 1980s first US-Soviet Summit in Iceland.  

So, this grandma still has a lot of mileage in her intellectually and, as I emphasize constantly, she is by far not the only one from the West who seeks refuge in Russia and the number of people like that will continue to grow. It is not anymore a theorem it is an axiom. Just take a look at that:

WTF, man, WTF!!!! The Armed Forces are the reflection of the society and once they become THIS, I don't know, what's next? The West disintegrates culturally in front of our eyes and it is so obvious that programming and justification for the eradication of the heterosexual white male in the West as such is underway big time. Testosterone is now verboten in America. Just compare:

Translation: This... is the first day of your new life. What was yesterday means nothing now. Who you were before, no-one cares now. What's important now is—who you'll be today. What do you know about yourself? What are you capable of? Questions may remain unanswered, but can you sleep soundly later on? Knowing yourself, knowing the limit of your possibilities... To hell with limits. Are you ready to break yourself? Every day, pain hardens you here. It was you who decided to prove something to yourself. The commander is here only for you to see an enemy in him, because without the enemy, there is no battle. Because without battle, there is no victory. But in reality, the main enemy is you. The you of yesterday. Your task is to track the enemy down, catch up to him, outperform him, become better than him, and return the victor. Because tomorrow is the first day of your new life.

Make your own conclusions.

P.S. Announcement. For people who cannot buy my latest book (paperback) from Amazon, this is not because it is "not available" but because they simply sold out whatever they had (Temporarily out of stock) and the new batch is on its way. Kindle edition is available, though.    

INF Treaty Again.

Daniel Larison continues to exhibit complete unawareness of the Russia's reality (a feature characteristic of US "scholars", read latest piece by "scholar" Gvosdev as an example) and in his calls to preserve the INF Treaty "despite Russia's violations" he characterizes this treaty this way:

The INF Treaty is very much worth saving, and quitting it over a Russian violation is as short-sighted and self-defeating as can be. If the U.S. withdraws, there will be no chance of negotiating a replacement. Not only will the U.S. be held as the one most responsible for killing the treaty, but by ending it the Trump administration will be opening the door to an arms race that no one should want. The treaty is one of the most advantageous agreements to the U.S. that our government has ever negotiated, so it is extremely difficult to see how leaving the treaty benefits the U.S. Quitting the INF Treaty unfortunately fits the administration’s pattern of reneging on and abandoning agreements without giving any thought to the consequences of withdrawal. It makes no sense to give up on a treaty that has proven its worth to the U.S. and our European allies for more than thirty years.

This Treaty is more than just one of the most advantageous for the US it is one of the most one-sided and humiliating treaties for USSR since very little negotiating, in a traditional you give some--you get some back sense, was really done. Gorbachev and his cabal of do-gooders made sure that Soviet military, especially professionals in air and anti-missile defense, were excluded from the decision making process on this issue and, effectively, the INF Treaty was a surrender, one of many that will follow, by Gorbachev. There is a reason why State Duma's Defense Committee Chair General Vladimir Shamanov (former C'n'C of Paratroops) called last week on establishing commission on what he (correctly) stated was a state treason (in Russian) by still living Gorbachev and late Alexandr Yakovlev and Eduard Shevardnadze.

Shamanov is correct in demanding such a commission--it is not just to convict Gorbachev, however deserved by him, of treason--but to make sure that such a political assessment will help to prevent future attempts to sell the national interests out so blatantly. So, Larison, while calling on Trump to preserve INF Treaty misses one important fact. It is not, as Larison points out, just Bolton and his nefarious plans:

The bigger problem is that the administration’s determination to leave the treaty is driven more by Bolton’s ideological hostility to all arms control agreements than it is by any concern about any violations. The administration is seizing on Russian violations to withdraw from this treaty, but it also has no desire to keep New START alive, either. Letting New START die would be even more dangerous, but the administration isn’t interested in extending a treaty that Russia has complied with for almost eight years.

It is the fact which neither Larison, nor Gvosdev, nor any other US "scholar" can wrap their brains around--Russia does not view US as a viable negotiating partner, nor lives in a delusion about American economy, its actual size and trends anymore. Russia sees the US for what she is and was getting ready for geopolitical volatility since mid-2000s. But then again, those people in Russia are counting their blessings that they didn't study in US Ivy League on how to make economic, military and geopolitical forecasts and because of that deal with reality much more professionally than most American so called "scholars" of international relations. At least Gvosdev is now using a somewhat slightly more sober assessments:

The United States policy establishment, however, lacks experience and, daresay, comfort, with dealing with rivals. 

I have also some free piece of knowledge to share with Gvosdev--the United States policy (and "academic") establishment has zero experience and understanding of the nature of military power and its applications and the way it is a function of the national power. It is here where, with some minor exceptions, that any rational conversation with American "academe" becomes useless--it simply does not operate within appropriate framework. Russia knows that US is "departing", that its GDP is not vaunted $22 trillion but much-much smaller, that most of US economic growth is a creative bookkeeping (aka fraud) and, finally, Russia knows with a great degree of accuracy the actual scale of American military power. If only US academe learned about it, who knows--much energy could have been saved by not writing contrived foreign policy and military articles. Or as OffGuardian people succinctly observed in their review of John Mearsheimer's latest book, a systemic, chronic ill of overwhelming majority of American foreign policy "scholarship" is that:

there is a tendency (throughout the book) to take the US estimation of itself at face value.    

I don't think Larison or Gvosdev would like to learn the actual value but without it any rationalizing or reasoning around US-Russian relations becomes a mere sophistry and repetition of the long debunked cliches. The problem is not Russia, which is quite content with herself and is ready to work with almost anybody, but, indeed, American crusading exceptionalist spirit which went completely out of control and threatens to finish off both the US herself and the world around her.