Immediate Flaw ...

 ... which shines through in this video:

And this is what happens when you have a degree in ... English Literature instead of military science and military technology. 

1. Jiang Xueqin strangely doesn't talk about what is being done to Israel, which is a devastation, to put it mildly and as the result ...

2. He merely re-narrates Israeli "plans" and views not pointing out that without the West Israel is but a shithole with a pathetic army capable only of punitive and genocidal actions. Good luck creating Greater Israel with that and Israeli "economy". 

3. Parallels to Vietnam are wrong--Iran is not Vietnam and it has a direct geographic link to Russia, albeit North Vietnam has the common border with China. As Eric correctly pointed out about Vietnam War, Jiang Xueqin will be best advised to freshen up on his history (after all he teaches history, right?) and see for himself who has been doing the bulk of fighting and dying in Vietnam War and that wasn't the US. Correct, it was ARVN. The US did the only thing it can do well--bomb. 

The only bright spot in his statements was correct pointing out that the US didn't fight the real war in decades. Right. In fact, culturally, resources-wise, operationally and socially the US cannot fight real combined arms operations of scale--it simply doesn't have military DNA for it. Nor, presently, economy is even remotely comparable (adjusted for time period) to the US massive industrial output in 1965-1975. And even then, inability to sustain the war forced Nixon to abandon gold standard. He talks about it all as if this is not happening, but it is ...

Every day and there is panic in D.C. none of them knows what to do. I want to remind AGAIN ... 

Each war represents an isolated case, requiring an understanding of its own particular logic, its own unique character (c) A.A. Svechin. Strategy. 

Memorize it, internalize it. 

Why Russians Call Ukrops ...

 ... pigs. Even in the face of their dead cannon fodder they cannot stop being ... pigs. The nation is in a complete psychosis and mental breakdown. Albeit combined West is not far behind. 

Meanwhile, lovely Gabrielle Duvoisin (she is French but is Russian now) explains in Russian how she was taught in France about WW II. Yes, you guessed it--it was about how the US defeated Hitler and liberated Europe. 

Well, Gabrielle is now the part of Russian history and she can be proud. These are Europeans (French, German, Italian et al) Russians embrace and want them in Russia. 

Larry Posted an Excellent ...

 ... long read by Peter Henseler. I strongly recommend reading it. 

Trump’s desire to reach an agreement with Putin is palpable. He has many irons in the fire – too many? Witkoff is not sure of the facts, and a lack of historical awareness could become a stumbling block. Putin is waiting – because he can.

It is a good overview of the balance of REAL power today and also about a thing which I speak and write about ad nauseam--history. Especially nowadays, with 80th anniversary of defeat of Nazi Europe (yes, Europe) in WW II. Henseler gives a much-needed reminder of why Russians have issues with Hollywood and military history curriculum in the US military academies and war colleges. I surely do have. 

Yeah, So?

As if it is something new. 

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, gave his strongest hint yet that the White House is about to lift its restrictions on Ukraine using long-range weapons supplied by the west on key military targets inside Russia, with a decision understood to have already been made in private. Speaking in Kyiv alongside the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, Blinken said the US had “from day one” been willing to adapt its policy as the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine changed. “We will continue to do this,” he emphasised. Blinken said he and Lammy would report back to their “bosses” – Joe Biden and Keir Starmer – after their talks on Wednesday with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The foreign secretary suggested Iran’s dispatch of ballistic missiles to Moscow – revealed this week – had changed strategic thinking in London and Washington. It was a “significant and dangerous escalation”, he said.

I have to constantly stress that it changes absolutely nothing because attacks on, as an example, Belgorod have been occurring on a weekly bases and most of them have been on civilian targets. They are really desperate, including obvious serious lack of understanding of the ramifications and as Phil Giraldi says here starting at 7:00--historians will be astonished by "pure insanity and where did they get these people"...

Well, we know where they came from and who they are--they all came through Israeli-first orgs in the US, ranging from AIPAC to CUFI and through degree mills in Ivy League. A defining trait of these people is sociopathy--otherwise you will not get far in American politics. Especially in American politics. Exceptionalism and greed are serious mental illnesses and here is an incredibly interesting piece (in Russian) that the US is actually not a Rome despite all of its efforts to emulate it, but rather it is a Carthage. 

Основатели американского государства сделали многое, чтобы их страну считали новым Римом: отсюда вся символика в оформлении Вашингтона, Капитолийский холм, здание Конгресса с римскими колоннами, должности консулов и сенаторов. Америка пытается «вести за собой мир», как недавно заявил Байден. Но аналогия с Римом здесь вообще неуместна. 

Translation: The founders of the American state did a lot to make their country to be considered the new Rome: hence all the symbols in the design of Washington, Capitol Hill, the Congress building with Roman columns, the positions of consuls and senators. America is trying to "lead the world", as Biden recently said. But the analogy with Rome is completely inappropriate here.

Read the whole thing--it is a compelling case. And we all know what famous words are associated with Carthage, yes, Carthago Delenda Est. Make your own conclusions. 

"We liberated them... and they will never forgive us for it..."(c)

This famous Zhukov's quip was prescient. It all came true. Germans hate Russians because they sustained a crushing defeat in 1945. Western "democracies" hate Russia, Soviet Union being a historic Russia, because they know who actually defeated Axis forces, and because West's military mythology has its roots in stolen valor claims that it was the US who defeated Nazism. They continue to rewrite history, today, on the eve of May 9 Victory Day. Here is Konrad Adenauer's fund. Some Ph.D. from Germany writes:

Am 8. Mai 1945 wurden nicht nur ganz Europa, sondern gerade auch die Deutschen von der Tyrannei des Nationalsozialismus befreit. Auch die Sowjetunion war an der Befreiung beteiligt, anders als die Westalliierten hatte sie allerdings nicht den Liberalismus, sondern einen neuen Totalitarismus im Gepäck. Angesichts des russischen Überfalls auf die Ukraine zeigt sich nun, dass auch der vermeintliche Sieg des Liberalismus 1989/90 nicht von Bestand war. Die außen- und sicherheitspolitischen Versäumnisse des Westens und besonders auch Deutschlands seither lassen sich damit nicht mehr beiseiteschieben. 

Translation: On May 8, 1945, not only the whole of Europe, but also the Germans in particular were liberated from the tyranny of National Socialism. The Soviet Union was also involved in the liberation, but unlike the Western Allies, it did not bring liberalism with it, but a new totalitarianism. In view of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is now clear that even the supposed victory of liberalism in 1989/90 was not to last. The foreign and security policy failures of the West and especially Germany since then can no longer be brushed aside.

 

Ah, yes, those side-show Rooskies subhumans who ALSO took part in "liberation" by destroying 80% of creme de la creme Axis power and demolishing German National-Socialism nightmarish slave and death machine. But who cares. You can read this pseudo-academic schizophrenic piece by this Ph.D. Matthias Oppermann and it will give you a good understanding why there is nothing to discuss with the West. What can one possibly discuss with people influenced by "history" from Anthony Beavor, Anne Applebaum or this German "defender" of liberalism. That is why the desire to spoil for Russians the Victory Day Parade at the Red Square is so irresistible--the combined West is sustaining, as I type this, the handing of its ass on the platter in Ukraine, it happens in Syria (US pilots now turn their targeting complexes on trying to spook Russian pilots with "lock on" in Syria) and elsewhere and the desperation is palpable. 

But it is the Victory Day Parade at the Red Square which hurts them the most, because it is the day when Russia demonstrates and states unequivocally who and how defeated German National-Socialism and why this is being done for the second time on a global scale, this time defeating yet another iteration of the totalitarian ideology known as globalism and its concentrated expression through Pax Americana much of whose mythology is built around stealing the credit for the defeat of Hitler. This time, however, it is different--never again the foot of Russian soldier should step on the European soil, even when they will scream, and they will, for help--let them deal with what's coming themselves. If they die, Europe was dead already for decades spiritually, physical death will be the only natural outcome. 

 

Meanwhile, I congratulate you all with Victory Day and want to remind you that the history of WW II in the West is not a history, with some notable exceptions, but primarily a field for falsifications in order to justify on-going ugly mutations of modern "liberalism". In the end, there is very little difference between war criminals in Washington in 2023 and war criminals in Berlin of 1941.   

A Brick Wall.

I know, I often am blamed for my condescending attitude towards humanities and especially History, the way it is being written and taught in the Anglo-Saxon world. We all can recall Sir Anthony Beavor who, far from being real military historian, paraded himself as the man who has issues grasping force structure and basic math. And he is just one such "historian' who produced meme in Russia about gazillion "raped" German women.  Examples of such "history" and "historians" abound everywhere and in Russia too, be that Solzhenitsified caricature on 1930s-50s to Fomenko's famous "new chronology". History is no less about juxtaposition of the facts than it is about deliberate and highly responsible research. I was among many who applauded Kremlin's decision to close Russian archives to Western "historians" most of who basically "research" there for anti-Russian narratives, not for history.

But then there is another issue--by the year 2023 history as a scientific field ran, no smashed, full speed into the brick wall of technological and natural complexity of the world. And here is the piece in TAC, which I visit periodically, in which Sumantra Mairta makes a case for The End of (Academic) History. She reasonably complains that:

The academic discipline of history was always a courtly subject. One, it needs an emotionally detached and occasionally amoral temperament to be done right. There is a reason cardinals and monks were often great historians, as were adventurers and soldiers. Two, it needs patronization. History as a subject was never egalitarian, but in a paradoxical way it used to be a lot freer. Statesmen posted in far-off colonies during peak Victoriana were free to travel around and study a subject or a civilization. They did it as a hobby, were unbiased about their subjects, and were usually under no financial pressure to toe a political line, the human and social biases of those times notwithstanding. Those who were not in a position for that, but were still exceptionally talented or meritorious otherwise, were patronized individually or through an institution, yet with little scholarly pressure. That changed gradually after the Second World War, and especially with the rapid institutionalization and mass-democratization of the discipline in the 1980s and ’90s. 

The recent passing of one of the greatest, Corelli Barnett, symbolizes the completion of "democratization" of history, that is to say the destruction of it, and even in her short essay Maitra exposes a brick wall. 

I once wrote a short essay on the direction of historical and political research in which a couple of throwaway sentences caused some mild uproar. “One has only to look at the history departments in British Universities to see how seriously interdisciplinary research has diluted the discipline. Today, a historian of World War I studying fleet tactics is considered to be on an equal footing with someone exploring post-structural erotic subtexts in letters from the trenches.” The crisis in the discipline of history isn’t new and will only get worse...

Well, since the issue of WW I fleet tactics was touched, one has to point out immediately what researcher of said tactics can not do without, even for the primitive times of steam and steel. To REALLY study such a tactics one has to start with basic issues of navigation and maneuvering, which, even during WW I have been mechanized as much as possible but still required this:

And the mastery of operations with vectors and relative movement as was already a requirement for gunnery. Of course, issues of uncertainties are also nothing to be easily dismissed, and once one gets into the neck of the woods of WW I naval warfare, things become increasingly complex and have very little in common with Hollywood concept of war on the high seas. Yes, even for WW I. The issue of the combat control of fleets already then was horrendously complex, not least through developing Theory of Search and of what amounted to a primitive ISR. And then, of course, there is an issue of communications. Just see how Goeben escaped or what has transpired at Jutland. That is why they taught mathematics and physics in officer naval schools systematically already then. Precisely the subjects which are not taught in History programs and that is just WW I. 

You can have fun by reading on the evolution of gunnery for the US Navy since WW I--very light mathematical descriptions--here. And view those ever important errors:

And this is just scratching the surface, since one deciding to become a specialist in naval tactics even in WW I had to have a very good ability in Trigonometry and this thingy (spherical trigonometry is fun, not really;))

And all this is just scratching the surface. Once one gets into the history and fleet tactics of WW II, boy, this is where the shit hits the fan and one needs to have a good background in a lot of things, including, of course, ships automation and first electromechanical computers which ran ships and their weapons. 

Boy, this shit was fascinating. Not to mention courses in radar technology and, of course, ASW. So, you get my drift, right? And I am not even talking about war correlates which feed all those wonderful egg-headed Operations Research Groups in every military, with guys doing math, physics, electronics and mechanics non-stop. And it is already at this juncture where one must begin to understand WHY tactical level officers be them in the US, USSR/Russia or France, be them naval, army or air force have been and still are being fed a massive volume of a highly specialized STEM knowledge projected against the background of tactical and even operational realities of modern warfare, whose age unfolded fully in 1960s-70s.  

And then comes this--and this is where the brick wall becomes impenetrable and requires apart from extremely complex highly specialized knowledge training, also, very high level clearances.

All this is beyond the grasp of historians, and political "scientists", especially the ones who write and defend their Ph.D theses on the history of Queer movement and homo-eroticism. Two absolutely different animals, and things will not get better--they will get much worse for history as an academic field, because the history since 18th century is being written by engineers and people with natural science backgrounds. And those are very difficult degrees and research which goes into them. Hence, the brick wall and it is impenetrable. Just look at "reporting" on SMO by all those "voenkors" and Western media. Only real professionals know the real score and they ain't historians.

When I Get Tired....

...from reading and hearing yet another pompous bullshit from some random British establishment or media representative, I always go for a jugular and... watch Duchess Kate Middleton and marvel at her real beauty and femininity. Boy, House of Windsor certainly scored 10 on this one, and I always laugh when some creep from paparazzi tries to compare Kate to late Princess Diana--there is no comparison, Kate outshines everyone who ever was in the limelight near Buckingham Palace for the last 50 years (maybe 100) by the order of magnitude.  

She is a truly beautiful woman who is a delight to look at (while the wife is not around) and she is the one who helps me to avoid questioning mental and cognitive abilities of the UK's political establishment, because in terms of morons per capita UK certainly gives the US a run for its money and sometimes even lovely Duchess cannot help. 

Enter yet another product of Sandhurst. 

Ben Wallace has accused Vladimir Putin of Tsarist ambitions as he said there will be “severe economic sanctions” if Ukraine is invaded. The Defence Secretary made his comments after high-stakes talks this week between Nato and Russia failed to find a solution to the Kremlin’s increasingly threatening behaviour towards its neighbour. Citing a 5,000-word essay that the Russian president wrote last summer entitled “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, Mr Wallace said that he had been unable to “separate” himself from Mr Putin’s belief that “Ukraine really is Russian”. “I’m concerned that what this is really about is President Putin’s legacy; that is about a false vision, a Russia that even the Tsars failed to create and consolidate – that is the Russia of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia,” he said. In a stark warning, Mr Wallace said that this “motto of the tsars for the Russian Empire” had “far deeper consequences for the security of Eastern Europe, because it doesn’t stop at Ukraine”. He likened Mr Putin’s further ambitions to “ethnonationalism”, cautioning that “in our history of Europe, ethnonationalism has led to some of the worst conflicts in the last millennium”.

Wallace, definitely, has issues with reading comprehension because both Putin's article and every other statement re: 404 after that was about the fact that Russia doesn't want any war with Ukraine and that Russia is fully content with Ukraine existing within the Germany-Austria framework, when Ukraine becomes a neutral independent country. Wallace also is a bit shaky on a "Tsarist thing" because he definitely doesn't know Russia's history, which is not surprising considering such Sandhurst's "products" as Antony Beavor who passes for "military historian" in Anglo-world and who is a proud heir to a British Russophobic propaganda purveyors. Just one example out of many. 

So, it will be really important to Wallace to resign himself to the fact that modern Russia has no intentions to create Russia per "tsarist vision" nor that Britain is an empire, but a second tier country which is economically, militarily, scientifically and culturally is dwarfed by Russia and no amount of pseudo-historic BS from 10 Downing Street and its structures ranging from MI-6 to Foreign Office can change this fact. In related news, Mr. Wallace should take a look at the calendar and take in a simple fact--it is 2022, not 19th century. It matters, really. But, as I said, a strategic constant is called constant for a reason and it is very simple--if it comes to it, Russia will be able to "regime change" in Kiev with all what comes with it and the combined West can do nothing about it, least of all UK. 

Per "sanctions", good God, Russia doesn't care and continues her withdrawal from the primarily US-controlled institutions at an accelerated rate. I am sure Vladimir Putin is still in deep depression that he will not be able to shop in Harrods or in some boutiques in Paris and Milan selling overpriced and overrated crap, wink-wink. of course, Russians love English Premier League and are still enamored by the classic English Literature, not to mention counting Beatles and Pink Floyd, among many others, as a pinnacle of British creative genius, but that's about it. UK is simply not that important anymore. 

In related comedy news:

The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel, according to five former intelligence and national security officials familiar with the initiative. The program, which started in 2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to some of those officials. The CIA-trained forces could soon play a critical role on Ukraine’s eastern border, where Russian troops have massed in what many fear is preparation for an invasion. The U.S. and Russia started security talks earlier this week in Geneva but have failed thus far to reach any concrete agreement.

Yes, we all saw how good CIA's "training" is in Afghanistan. Including CIA's tactical and situational (lack) of awareness, not to mention the fact that IF (i underscore it--IF) Russia DOES decide to settle Ukrainian issue, CIA should know, Russia has very good, in fact, outstanding ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Recon) complex and VSU and its numerous "trained" units will cease to exist really fast. Somebody explain to these CIA "instructors" what modern war is with such country as Russia. I think they missed a few important lessons on what it means to fight a real enemy. I hear Russia's SSO shaking in their boots from fear, not.

OK, I Might As Well Say It.

After reading the discussion in the other thread and learning that Taliban now is in half-an-hour drive from Kabul, and we are observing America's defeat in a real time, I might as well tell what is this all about. I'll explain. During US 1990s "high" from self-proclaimed "victory" in the Cold War 1.0 to a turkey shoot of a third-rate Arab army of Iraq, there were many TV shows about Soviet war in Afghanistan, including on what used to be then the "Wings Channel" and in one of the shows about Soviet Air Force in Afghanistan this dude, brigadier general Rahmatullah Safi, you can see him in this video about Stingers:

Was waxing all "strategic" and "general staffish" and spoke about how Russians didn't care about losses and gave an example of...Stalingrad. It has to be considered that the dude was a brigadier general in Afghan Royal Army (yes, that thing existed, alright) and his whatever military "education" wasn't necessarily that of a officer with broad enough view to assess ratios of losses of the Axis and the Red Army in combined arms operations which dwarf anything in world's military, not to speak of Afghan Royal Army, history. 

The United States, fresh from 1980s-1990s successes, didn't hesitate to write and narrate an alternative military history regarding the Soviet Union, including the Soviet war in Afghanistan. The United States was content with the narrative that some Quran carrying, sandals wearing, Stinger shooting mujaheddin "defeated" the superpower. Of course, reality was vastly different but the United States didn't grasp then what Russians grasped from the git go and talked about it non-stop. Recall this 11 years ago: 

In fact, we were the first to defend Western civilization against the attacks of Muslim fanatics. No one thanked us. On the contrary, everyone was impeding our actions: The United States, NATO, Iran, Pakistan, even China. After the withdrawal of the Soviet Army, the Najibullah government that we left behind in Kabul remained in power for another three years. It is true that Soviet troops committed serious errors in Afghanistan. We had no teachers.How long would the Afghan government endure today if it were left alone to face the Taliban? A rapid slide into chaos awaits Afghanistan and its neighbors if NATO pulls out, pretending to have achieved its goals. A pullout would give a tremendous boost to Islamic militants, destabilize the Central Asian republics and set off flows of refugees, including many thousands to Europe and Russia.

Do you need me to repeat it? OK, in bold:

In fact, we were the first to defend Western civilization against the attacks of Muslim fanatics.

OK, one more time:

to defend Western civilization against the attacks of Muslim fanatics. 

How about learning this simple fact, that everything what was happening since 1979 was about stopping Islamization and from the get go the war had a distinct religious flavor. Try to explain this to some D.C. political general who would shit his pants when forced to speak in operational and strategic broadsides and call things their own name. It was the United States which set the precedent, even if the virtual one, in convincing the Islamic world, especially US Gulfie satrapies, that these medieval backward regimes could challenge real superpowers militarily and, in fact, have a political Islam as a viable instrument on the way to blowing up World Trade Center, to committing atrocity in Chechnya, culminating in a bestiality worthy of Nazi death camps in Beslan. All that with cheering and support from the combined West which couldn't see that bestowing some "victory" on Jihadists allegedly against the Soviet Union--a complete propaganda BS--the combined West was writing a scenario for own real humiliation. 

OK, it is a Saigon Moment, alright. Iraq is going not much better and in Russia it is a payback time, because Russians didn't run from Afghanistan, combined West is running. Lester Grau was prophetic, as was anyone with proper military background, where they teach you about political objectives and tactical and operational levels of war. I will repeat it again:

"There is a literature and a common perception that the Soviets were defeated and driven from Afghanistan. This is not true. When the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, they did so in a coordinated, deliberate, professional manner, leaving behind a functioning government, an improved military and an advisory and economic effort insuring the continued viability of the government. The withdrawal was based on a coordinated diplomatic, economic and military plan permitting Soviet forces to withdraw in good order and the Afghan government to survive. The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA)managed to hold on despite the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Only then, with the loss of Soviet support and the increased efforts by the Mujahideen (holy warriors) and Pakistan, did the DRA slide toward defeat in April 1992. The Soviet effort to withdraw in good order was well executed and can serve as a model for other disengagements from similar nations."

But the United States out of "exceptionalist" expediency was ready to listen to fairy tales of its mujaheddin clientele rather than to Russians whose experience with real wars is immense, Russians DID offer advice on Afghanistan and, in a dramatic contrast with American actions in 1980s, helped. All in vain. Now, the United States needs and is undergoing a military-political humiliation, which unlike Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, does bear all hallmarks of fleeing a battlefield, leaving after itself one gigantic clusterfuck, which Russians (and Chinese) would need to clean up and put it under some sort of a control. And here is the morale of that all, that good ol' Noblese Oblige between superpowers I was talking about--you do not rush to diminish and insult other superpowers in such affairs, when at stake is not some loss of battle or a campaign, but the effort to stop a Jihadist Internationale from forming, not least based on the American-produced myth that some head-choppers can defeat a superpower. But then again, the United States just proved that they can. As I always say, Karma is a bitch, and as one of the greats once said--if you spit into history, it may respond with a cannons' salvo. It seems like it did... In the end, present West is not even worth saving.

The Greatest Secret Of All, Or...No Shit.

They begin to wake up to reality? Or should we say that that West's "scholarship" re: USSR was always defined by ideological imperatives of the Cold War 1.0 and was framed, in the US especially, by people who overwhelmingly were ideologues and shysters from "humanities" field. The main function for the "Russia Studies" field in the US was always a provision of the employment (or cash flow) for all kinds of dissidents (aka useful idiots) and obfuscating the fact that the USSR with the exception of a few post October 1917 Revolution years was predominantly a conservative country. 

Glenn Diesen now speaks in broadsides trying to make people aware of the Soviet past and how it formed several generations of Russians. 

Is Russia plotting a return of the Soviet Union? That is the question Western politicians and talking heads ask every time Moscow so much as contemplates the more positive aspects of its history, imagining imperialism everywhere. Liberalism versus communism was the lens that dominated discussion throughout the Cold War while, since then, the question has been about whether Russia has finally driven out its purported past sins in favor of US-style liberalism. Any sign it hasn’t, and any failure to transform itself into a carbon copy of the West, is interpreted as a retreat to its Soviet past. Renowned scholar Samuel Huntington dismissed this binary ideological prism as the “Single Alternative Fallacy” that severely corrupts analysis of Russia. For most of its history, Moscow pursued conservatism as a third alternative and is now returning to this long-held tradition.The communists and conservatives were typically fierce enemies, although conservatism demands a cohesive national narrative and identity. Thus, Russian conservatism entails salvaging what it can of Soviet history.

For people who never experienced life in the USSR, especially in its post-WW II period--that makes it an overwhelming majority of Westerners ranging from regular plumbers to Ph.Ds in Russian History--it may sound as an insult, but they don't have a fucking clue. But then again, I am making my writing career based very much on showing the intellectual impotence of the Western "scholarly" class majority of which, when it comes to Russia, views it as "solzhenitsified" version (that is a caricature) of hell. This is not to speak to the fact, that this very same Solzhenitsyn, who was thrown out of USSR in 1974, never had a clue about my generation of people, and this is a generation which is a main driving political force today--I am talking about decision-making level. This is the same reason why most Russia "scholars" in the US cannot wrap their brains around a simple fact the most Russians will yawn and read themselves to the death from boredom by Pasternak's literary mediocrity (not to speak of watching Hollywood's second-rate lubok universally admired..in the West) Doctor Zhivago, while will have tears in their eyes when watching Soviet adaptation of Bulgakov's Beg (The Flight). 

 

USSR was no paradise and it had its share of problems but it was NOT what was presented in the West and it is this "presentation" which is a major factor in the geopolitical defeat of the combined West and a destruction of Russian-American relations. And even Diesen, while promoting seemingly right thesis of Russian conservatism, doesn't go far enough in naming the real reason for it:

Conservatism embraces the concept of evolutionary change, stability and national unity. These things, it holds, hinge on building the present on the solid foundations of the past. In contrast, revolutionary change entails uprooting the past to give way to something entirely different. Russia’s attraction to conservatism derives from the disruptiveness of its revolutionary history. The continuous uprooting of Russia’s past has created a fragmented history that produced conflicting national identities and aspirations. Subsequently, society becomes divided and vulnerable to subversion by foreign powers.

Yes, "subversion by foreign power" in Russian case are wars, whose scale, scope and brutality  have no parallels in human history, period. West alone is responsible for tens of millions of Russians wiped out throughout the history of invasions and there is no bigger "disruption" than war in the humanity's tool kit of destruction. Diesen's calls on liberals to "take a note" is an exercise in futility--they will not, nor will America's nominal "conservatives", who are as illiterate as their "liberal" opponents. So, don't waste your time, Mr. Diesen. 

 

There is a reason Sergei Shoigu went on record yesterday:

"There is a more awful part, it is becoming or has already become, the main danger for any country over the recent time, over the past decades. These are internal threats. All this is connected with a gradual degradation of society," Shoigu told a panel discussion at the Territory of Senses youth forum on Tuesday. As an example, the defense minister cited Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Syria and Egypt. "Some have withstood, while others haven’t," he added. It is clear how to fight against external threats, he stressed. "Threats to use force is when we are threatened, and we understand who is threatening, what they threaten us with, know what they armed with, know how to resist it, how to fight this, and we build our military defense accordingly," the minister added.

He continued: 

МОСКВА, 10 августа. /ТАСС/. /ТАСС/. Министр обороны РФ генерал армии Сергей Шойгу заявил, что Россия не должна позволять никому "вымывать" память о людях, которые являются символами страны. Глава военного ведомства отметил, что у России много символов, в том числе космонавт Юрий Гагарин, певец Федор Шаляпин, поэт Роберт Рождественский. Также среди символов страны он назвал первую в мире женщину-космонавта, ныне депутата Госдумы Валентину Терешкову. "Но вы все видите, что их постепенно пытаются "вымыть", <...> уже <...> и Терешкова не та, и Гагарин плох, и много чего. Мы не должны позволять делать это", - сказал Шойгу, выступая на панельной дискуссии на молодежном форуме "Территория смыслов". По словам министра, уничтожать память об этих людях, оскорблять их нельзя позволять ни соседу по лестничной площадке, ни "вражине" из-за рубежа.

Translation: MOSCOW, August 10. / TASS /. / TASS /. Russian Defense Minister General of the Army Sergei Shoigu said that Russia should not allow anyone to "wash away" the memory of the people who are the symbols of the country. The head of the military department noted that Russia has many symbols, including cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, singer Fyodor Chaliapin, poet Robert Rozhdestvensky. Also, among the symbols of the country, he named the world's first woman-cosmonaut, now a State Duma deputy, Valentina Tereshkova. "But you all see that they are gradually trying to" wash ", <...> already <...> and Tereshkova is not the same, and Gagarin is bad, and a lot of things. We should not allow this to be done," Shoigu said. speaking at the panel discussion at the youth forum "Territory of Meanings". According to the minister, neither a neighbor on the staircase nor a "foe" from abroad should be allowed to destroy the memory of these people, to insult them.

Speaks volumes, doesn't it. Guess three times who was a Supreme Commander who led the country to the defeat of a combined West's forces in the Great Patriotic War? Right. The worst news for the West today is the fact that overwhelming majority of Russians recognized their history as a unified, continuous journey, most of it very difficult, but always resulting in the accomplishment of an enormous scale. That is why today the names of Alexander Nevsky and Stalin, of Peter the Great and of Zhukov are in the same pantheon of Russia's greats and that is the only way it is supposed to be. That is a huge part of conservatism, a real one--the preservation of the history of people. Diesen, however, beat me, to a degree, to the second part of my post on the Getting the Time Scale Right. Because what exists in the West as a "history" of the Cold War 1.0 has very little to do with the realities of the Soviet Union as presented by Soviet dissidents and liberal "reformers" of 1990s who didn't hate communism, they merely hated Russia and almost genetically driven conservatism of the majority of Russian people. I will omit here, for now, famous prediction by late Alexander Zinoviev who twenty years ago foresaw the "Re-sovietization" of Russia's life and it has nothing to do with the "restoration" of the USSR which Russians don't need and don't want as part of their country. It was same Zinoviev who coined the phrase about Soviet dissidents: we aimed at communism but hit Russia.  

P.S. Just ask yourself a question why Tucker Carlson is in Hungary right now, and why, strangely (not really), these are the countries of the former Soviet block who actively resist globalist post-modernist plague. You know, Victor Orban, Puti... cough, cough. Just saying.

Following The Trends.

Associated Press reports: 

MOSCOW (AP) — A revised version of Russia's national security strategy says that it may use forceful methods to respond to unfriendly actions by foreign countries, a top Kremlin official said in remarks published Monday, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the presidential Security Council, said that the document foresees that Moscow could take “symmetric and asymmetric measures to thwart or avert unfriendly actions that threaten the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation.” In an interview published Monday by the government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta that those “primarily will be special economic measures, but also coercive forceful methods if necessary."

I understand that it may come as a surprise to many West's journos, but national security of any country has a massive military (that is forceful or violent) element to it. After all, let's recall how the United States under the pretext of "national security" did this. Remember?

Russia has resources and will to use them if she deems threats to national security worthy of application of violent means. Nothing new in that at all, but emphasis on this issue is incredibly important. 

Будущее России помимо материального благополучия ее граждан зависит и от того, как нам удастся сохранить духовность и нравственность, традиции, передать молодому поколению память о героическом прошлом их предков. Для нейтрализации угроз, связанных с искажением истории, с разрушением базовых морально-этических норм, с попытками внедрения чуждых идеалов и ценностей в области образования, культуры, религии, в Стратегии сформулирован новый стратегический национальный приоритет "Защита традиционных российских духовно-нравственных ценностей, культуры и исторической памяти".

Translation:  The future of Russia, in addition to the material well-being of its citizens, also depends on how we manage to preserve spirituality and morality, traditions, and pass on to the young generation the memory of the heroic past of their ancestors. To neutralize the threats associated with the distortion of history, with the destruction of basic moral and ethical norms, with attempts to introduce alien ideals and values ​​in the field of education, culture, religion, the Strategy formulates a new strategic national priority "Protection of traditional Russian spiritual and moral values, culture and historical memory ".  

As the strategic truism goes--want the enemy to surrender its country, bring up its youth. Here is Brittany, speaks about this issue. 

And here is a counterpoint. Russia held few days ago a celebration of the 5th Anniversary of creation of Russia's Yunarmy (Youth Army) which grew today to an paramilitary organization numbering 810,000 kids and continues to grow. Here is Sergei Shoigu addressing kids of Yunarmy few days ago at the celebratory event called High Five and I can tell you one thing--these kids already know how to shoot, how to handle weapons, some, actually, already jump with parachute and are closely acquainted with military organization. 

For these kids, from the early age, service and military routine are normal part of their upbringing from 8 years of age. It is more than just about weapons, topography, battlefield first aid and things of this purely military nature--it is about certain moral and spiritual imperatives much of which go back in history to the Great Patriotic War. That means the sacrifice for the country, for friends, for loved ones, in a larger scheme of things. This is national security at its most fundamental level. Here, the combined West has nothing to offer to be even counted as a competitor, unless it is a degenerate woke pseudo-culture or critical race theory. Good luck with trying to promote this BS in Russia. 

In related news, Russia marked the 288th anniversary of the Northern Fleet and watching modern Russian military programming I cannot but finally admit to myself--boy, Russia finally learned how to make a really effective military porn. 

That, in itself, is also a major pillar of national security. It is another indicator of Russia's political elite being able to recognize global trends and react to them. As Pepe Escobar notes today:

The Western spin before Putin-Biden is that it might herald some sort of reset back to “predictability” and “stability” in currently extra-turbulent US-Russia relations. That’s wishful thinking. Putin, Patrushev and Lavrov harbor no illusions. Especially when in the G7 in London, in early May, the Western focus was on Russia’s “malign activities” as well as China’s “coercive economic policies.” Russian and Chinese analysts, in informal conversations, tend to agree that Geneva will be yet another instance of good old Kissingerian divide and rule, complete with a few seducing tactics to lure Moscow away from Beijing, an attempt to bide some time and probing openings for laying out geopolitical traps. Old foxes such as Yang and Patrushev are more than aware of the game in play. What’s particularly relevant is that Yang-Patrushev laid the groundwork for an upcoming Putin visit to Xi in Beijing not long after Putin-Biden in Geneva – to further coordinate geopolitically, once again, the “comprehensive strategic partnership”, in their mutually recognized terminology. The visit might take place on July 1, the hundredth anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party – or on July 16, the 20^thanniversary of the China-Russia Treaty of Friendship. So Putin-Biden is the starter; Putin-Xi is the main course.

So, when Karine Jean-Pierre states that the summit is not a US gift to Russia and that the summit will go on despite Russian (of course, Russian) hackers' now, allegedly, taking some meat packing plant in the US, one has to remind her that it is exactly the other way around. Russians were literally stalked by the US in order to agree to this summit, but, hey, whatever tickles one's ego. Do not expect any significant results from this upcoming summit other than spin in the US media. As long as the hot war could be avoided--good. Russia has a lot of business with China, the relations with who are becoming openly allied. The US is not a part of this arrangement. It cannot be.

This Is...

Project 68-Bis Soviet Light Cruiser Mikhail Kutuzov:

It now serves as a museum in Novorossiisk and it is named after the savior of Russia from Napoleon, Count and Field-Marshal Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov. Kutuzov owned Russian serfs and was a rather rich man. So was legendary Alexander Vasilievich Suvorov. Suvorov, apart from being generalissimo was a man known for a very uneasy character, he was a  nobility and among his illustrious military achievements, apart from owning serfs, is (almost) a suppression of Pugachev's peasant uprising. But Soviet Communists somehow decided that not only he (as well as Kutuzov) merited most prized WW II orders named after them, but Soviet Navy had another project 68-Bis light cruiser named after Suvorov. Here she is:

Of course, Soviet Communists continued with this tradition of commissioning ships and naming highest state awards after counts and princes, all those "class enemies" of "proletariat" and owners of serfs. But all that didn't matter--all those noble and very rich people did one thing--they fought for Russia. Nobody cared and cares what their opinions on exploited and suppressed Russian peasants were. Even communists recognized that. The class didn't matter, as long as it was for the greater good. But then again, Russians are so lucky, it is so easy for them--no matter who you are, once Russia was invaded, everything was secondary and the hero, be him a simple peasant or a prince, who could actually own this peasant hero, was and remained a hero. 

Not so, evidently in the US anymore.  

Gen. Milley has weighed in on the subject of military bases whose names are associated with the Confederacy. He also adds some value judgements, presumably his own, regarding Confederate Officers and soldiers: “Like the country it serves, the U.S. military is fighting an internal battle against racism, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said Thursday, but old names and symbols of that enemy are present and strong enough to sow division. “Divisiveness leads to defeat,” Milley told the House Armed Services Committee. “There is no place in our armed forces … for symbols of racism, bias or discrimination.” The Civil War was an “act of treason,” he said. The south’s military leaders betrayed their nation profoundly, and still, many military installations bear their names, according to Milley. “It was an act of treason at the time against the union, against the stars and stripes, against the U.S. Constitution, and those officers turned their back on their oath.”He goes on to support the removal of Confederate names and presumably symbols from the defence forces.

Alrighty then. Not that I care in particular about Confederacy and I, certainly, have a natural revulsion towards slavery, but still--correct me if I am wrong--the American Civil War was fought not against slavery. The slavery issue came up well into the war itself not least through the actions of one Russian dude who commanded one Yanks' regiment. The war was about states' rights. Right? So it is rather a complicated issue since South just wanted to go its own way. The consensus existed in the US prior to this woke session by Milley today, that a sort of reconciliation was reached on the issue of the Civil War, in the end Robert E. Lee had enough courage to call for reconciliation--not an easy thing to do for a defeated side. Yet, today, in 2020, the events of 160 years ago still cannot let many people rest just because of slavery? Can you imagine Russians disowning Kutuzov or Suvorov for owning serfs? Peter the Great was a bloody tyrant, granted a genius one, should Russians disown him? Russians erect monuments to him. 

A normal person looking at the United States today will be struck by the scale of self-immolation of the country which loves to proclaim itself to be a shining city on the hill. It is shining, all right, with the bright flames of its burning institutions, from military, to academia, to history to governance. But the flame of cowardice burns with blinding white flame and for such a country, which cannot provide for its historic continuity, for better or worse, there is no future. With George Washington, a slave-owner, waiting to be dethroned, his accomplishments be damned, the US will cease to exist as a viable entity both geographically and in spirit which was too weak to fight for own survival. But then again, I warned about that.

June 22.

It is the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow in Russia today. It was on that day in 1941 that unified forces of Europe, led by Nazi Germany invaded Soviet Union. There is no necessity to remind what price USSR paid for ridding the world off Nazism. The debate still rages on on why Eastern Front became such a military and humanitarian horror in which two sides fought each-other with ferocity never recorded in history and why Nazis and their allies committed atrocities on an industrial scale. Russians and other Slavs were to be largely eliminated and those left alive were to be kept illiterate and serve as slaves to Third Reich. 

Remarkably Patric Armstrong posted today a very interesting piece on Europe and Russia. It is certainly worth reading and contemplating. 

I have been considering writing this essay for some years but have put off doing so because I know that for many readers “Europe” means “best” and to say Russia is not European is to say that it’s not good enough. But at last President Putin has given me the opening: “Россия – это не просто страна, это действительно отдельная цивилизация“. “Russia, it’s not simply a country it is certainly a separate civilisation”. And who would dare disagree with him?

I believe I already mentioned it before that it was EU Commissioner Barroso who coined the phrase (later rephrased by John McCain) that Russia is a civilization masquerading as a nation. Title of Patrick's article is telling--Russia is not European. I agree to a certain extent, but I think that the most important issue today is not that Russia is not European, but the fact that majority of Russians do not WANT to be European. I spoke on numerous occasions about what I never thought I would witness in my life time:

Thus, while sharing some important culturaltraits, including in relation to some critical behavioral matrices—and Russians in outlook are very Western—a fundamental, philosophical difference between Russia and West remains and will remain so, because Western project in general reached its natural limits with liberalism, which is in the foundation of modern West, being absolutely inapplicable to Russian historic, geographic and cultural realities. Russians, certainly, absorbed and adapted from the West what they liked, yes, including modernization which had much in common with the West, not least through Marxism—a strictly Western invention. And it seemed, ata time that historic Russia was simply West’s prodigal son (or daughter)—this was a wrong impression. The wind from the West blows and Russia goes as a separate civilization which increasingly is self-aware of own significance 

Overwhelming majority of Russians' condescending view of the West and now bewilderment with a cultural (and economic) suicide of the United States is a sign of not only West's obvious accelerating decline, if not to say implosion, but of Russians largely arriving to consensus in their self-perception and for Russians it is much superior in its outlook than that of the combined West. As Patrick posits:

Not inferior, not “Asiatic”, not uncivilised, not uncultured; different. A “civilisation state”. As is China.

One, looking today at the American and European cities turning into the Mogadishos can see clearly that modern West, that is to say combined Europe, cannot interest Russia at large other than market. The experiment with liberalism in Russia is over and it is combined West which will need to face and, maybe, I do not hold my breath, exorcise its demons. There are very many of those. 

In related news, my friend sent me this today, as he called it "America's premier university turning into Titanic". Here is new "diversity" officer for Harvard.

In her leadership roles at UW-Madison, Charleston has been responsible for assessing and evaluating progress toward the goals of a campus-wide strategic diversity plan. She also oversaw its Office of Affirmative Action Programming and Planning, Office of Employee Disability Resources, and several undergraduate scholarship programs aimed at recruiting and retaining students who are historically underrepresented there.

I am sure her "degree" in 'history" will help her to finish off Harvard as a reputable school. Read the whole thing--it is surreal and it is... so new normal.  

You see, Russians have had enough with the West and today's date is a good day for recollection of what West's real views on Russia and Russians are. That is why Russians develop state-of-the-art weapons and develop real economy as if there is no tomorrow. Or as they say--better safe than sorry. 

UPDATE: meanwhile in the nation of AmSoc and Air Strip-2 implosion continues:

NEW YORK (AP) — The American Museum of Natural History will remove a prominent statue of Theodore Roosevelt from its entrance after years of objections that it symbolizes colonial expansion and racial discrimination, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday. The bronze statue that has stood at the museum's Central Park West entrance since 1940 depicts Roosevelt on horseback with a Native American man and an African man standing next to the horse. “The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior," de Blasio said in a written statement. "The City supports the Museum’s request. It is the right decision and the right time to remove this problematic statue.”

I do not particularly care about Teddy Roosevelt, but sure--how about Washington Monument and Statue of Liberty? 

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.