Dmitri Simes Is Not Stuipid.

Despite being one of the people behind The National Interest magazine which is, for all intents and purposes, a tabloid and a laughing stock due to its utterly ridiculous opinions (bar few far and between competent ones) on matters of warfare. In fact, Dmitri Simes was one of the victims of slander by the Russiagate-mongering media whores. But Simes' problem is a bit more complex--for years he was commenting on US polices to Russian audiences and that is where I always had issue with him and points of view he was trying to present as some kind of range of interpretations of views by some invisible Washington elites who arrived to those views as a result of rational thought based on understanding of the American national interest (no pun intended). Each time I watched Simes trying to explain this I had an urge to tell him to drop the pretense of expertise and face the reality that the United States is run by literally imbeciles and corrupt petulant sociopaths. 

Here is Simes yesterday at Putin's press-conference where he asks a question about START's extension. Watch how Putin comments on that.

It is extremely instructive and both implicitly and explicitly underscores a total lack of credibility of the United States in any issue of the international relations. Comments on Ukraine are especially amusing, because they are true.  So, I don't know Simes' thought process but today any talk about sensible arms limitations treaties with the United States is a complete exercise in futility, as it was starting from Russia getting Crimea back as a result of US (and EU) sponsored bloody coup in Kiev in 2014. We are inside the increasingly hard global geopolitical clash the declining United States initiated as the last resort in trying to save it increasingly ethereal hegemony. The obvious problem, of course, is the fact that the US doesn't have any resources for such a serious clash. Before financial noose tightens completely--different analysts only vary in the time frame, not the ultimate outcome--Russia has all the time she needs to play "the forms must be obeyed" game, making sure that no global conflict erupts, that is NOT initiated by increasingly desperate United States. After that? I don't know, I don't think anybody knows, least of all American political class most of which never worked a day in productive capacity or served in any way or form in the military to have experiences with the real world, be that inside the US, let alone outside where the ignorance of American politicians became legendary. I guess, the look at Dmitri's face by the end of Putin's response could tell the story, even when considering the fact that Simes is generally not very emotional and is rather on a grim side most of the times. Dmitri Simes is not a stupid man by far but he should have seen what was coming and about what I warned five years ago. 

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.  

After that, I just needed to document this defeat. I do owe one clarification, however, to my readers here--I take no joy in seeing the country, which gave us shelter and became our home in the times of humanitarian catastrophe in Russia (former USSR to be more precise) in 1990s and whose founding ideas shone so attractively then, degenerating into the third world dysfunctional politically and economically clone of some African or Latin American failed states. But maybe there is a degree of a poetic historic justice in that. I don't know. 

Now thanks to our reader Eduardo, who provided the link (Thank you) to Phil Giraldi's blazing account of the state of the US military, I want to quote some. As you may understand and I never hid it, in fact, I spoke about it openly--my background prevents me, for ethical reasons, from too much of a focus on the actual state of US military. Phil does have this right, fully deserved. This is what he has to say:

Bakken even disputes the widely held view that the military academies have high academic standards. He describes how the “system” pays to get potential athletes and accepts students nominated by congressmen commensurate with donations made to fund re-election campaigns. Swanson sums it up by observing how the academies offer “a community college-level education only with more hazing, violence, and tamping down of curiosity. West Point takes soldiers and declares them to be professors, which works roughly as well as declaring them to be relief workers or nation builders or peace keepers. The school parks ambulances nearby in preparation for violent rituals. Boxing is a required subject. Women are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted at the three military academies than at other US universities.” Bakken concludes that appreciating the fundamental structural flaws in the US armed forces “leads to a clearer understanding of the deficiencies in the military and how America can lose wars.” In fact, he does not even seek to identify a war that the United States has won since World War 2 in spite of the country being nearly constantly engaged in conflict. Together the Bakken book and the Afghanistan Papers reveal just how much the American people have been brainwashed by their leaders into believing a perpetual warfare national narrative that is more fiction than fact. Donald Trump may have actually appreciated that the voters were tired of the wars and was elected on that basis, but he has completely failed to deliver on his promise to retrench. It suggests that America will remain in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future and the inevitable next war, wherever it might be, will be another failure, no matter who is elected in 2020.

Read it in full. It is worth reading. I said many times--political scientists do not make good geopolitical analysts because they do not have instruments required for understanding the main factor which shapes geopolitical balance--military power and warfare. Phil Giraldi has those instruments.    

A Little Milestone.

Ha, I only now noticed that my little bloggy is past first million of views. What do ya know. As you may have guessed already--this blog is purely a personal outlet and I deliberately do not promote it in any way. Only seldom I provide a link to specific posts when, usually, posting at Unz discussion boards. Yet, people continue to find this blog, sadly, damn advertisers do it too. I don't know, do they track blogs by number of views to insert their damn commercials? Anyhow, this blog is now a millionaire. 

Per some news--a superb piece by Phil Giraldi at Unz, absolutely spot on. 

The reckless calibrations employed to set American policies in other parts of the world are also playing out badly. Russia has been hounded relentlessly since the 2016 election, wasting the opportunity to establish a modus vivendi that Trump appeared to be offering in his campaign. Russian and American soldiers confront each other in Syria, where the U.S. has absolutely no real interests beyond supporting feckless Israel and Saudi Arabia in an unnecessary armed conflict that has already been lost. There is now talk of war coming from both Moscow and Washington while NATO in the middle has turned aggressive in an attempt to justify its existence. The bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Russia is now worse than it was towards the end of the Cold War while the expansion of NATO up to Russia’s doorstep has threatened the Kremlin’s vital interests without advancing any interest of the United States.

Read it, this is Phil Giraldi at his best.  

Nunes Memo Revisited.

Things, as you may have noticed, are getting really interesting around this so called Russiagate story. I am not going to repeat points which many other, and way more competent than me in US Intelligence Community, people already stated. Among them are excellent pieces by both Publius Tacitus, at Colonel Lang's blog, and Phil Giraldi. I may add here only some points which I also already made on Colonel's blog. I repeat:

1. The significance of Nunes' (and not his only) Memo is not even in what is stated there--this to some degree was already known to many who had any brains left. Its significance is in staking out the framework of further development of the events and it is in making sure that they revolve around single and strategically crucial pivot of a clearly bogus contrived "dossier" which was the main reason for initiation of this whole anti-Russian and anti-Trump sabotage campaign. Now, after Memo was outed, no matter what amount of procedural and legalistic BS will be and is already being thrown around, the Memo, like those proverbial 95 Theses by Martin Luther, is nailed to the doors of a cathedral and can not be avoided. 

2. It is clear that the depth of conspiracy is astonishing and most of Russiagate is built on lies, rumors and shoddy "intelligence". I personally have all reasons to believe that the so called "Russian government sources" which Christoper Steele claims are not really Russian  government nor real sources. Steele's short stint in Moscow  in 1990-92 at the height of the post-Soviet collapse and chaos by definition limits his claimed "contacts", rezidentura or whatever one calls it (a "network") to a collection of odious and now largely absolutely irrelevant political and intelligence figures who only go by this title of "sources in Russian government" in Steele's fairy tales. Steele certainly has no access whatsoever to any political, military or intelligence level in Russia which matters in current Russian government for a very simple reason of the whole framework: as events starting from 2008 has shown Anglo-American Intelligence apparatus is, well, not good. If the whopping intelligence-political failure to "handle" Russia is not a proof, then I don't know what is. If they couldn't predict something what was happening openly, in their faces, why would they be any better on anything else. As Phil Giraldi stated himself, CIA simply unlearned how to spy.

3. Most (there are, I assume, some exceptions) HUMINT sources in Russia for people like Steele can only be limited to already well known uber-liberal pro-Western "tusovka" which, while being an openly anti-Russian, exhibited itself to be also profoundly anti-Trump during election season. Apart from some Ukrainian angle in this whole story, I wouldn't exclude at all that some of those "Russians" who helped Steele to concoct his cocktail of BS could, indeed, be involved for a number of Russian internal political reasons plus making a "favor" for who they perceived at the time to be a winner of 2016 US Presidential Elections, that is HRC. It is not a secret that there were some significant hopes pinned on Trump's victory among some segments of Russia's body politic too. I will merely quote Phil Giraldi here:

One truly very interesting aspect of the Republican memo that has been scarcely commented upon is that even though the mainstream media is continuing to exercise its dangerous obsession with Russia by demanding that the Russiagate inquiry should continue full speed in spite of the concerns raised by the Republicans, there is absolutely nothing in the memo itself that indicates that Moscow tried to recruit any Trump associate as an agent or interfere in the U.S. election. The raison d’etre for the Congressional and Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigations appears to be lacking. Perhaps it is all sound and fury signifying nothing, but Russia might in reality have done little beyond the usual probing and nosing around that intelligence agencies routinely do. If the alleged Russiagate conspiracy is never actually demonstrated, which looks increasingly likely, it would certainly disappoint the many American talking heads and media “experts” who have been making a living off of bashing Moscow 24/7.

4. Once the time for "review" of State Department, as Nunes indicated, comes we may begin to see not only legal, already clear, challenges to the American nation as a whole, we may start seeing a larger framework of truly global conspiracy to unleash Cold War 2.0 both for Clinton-Liberal-Globalist cabal reasons and for internal economic reasons too. One of those reasons manifested itself two days ago in rather "impressive" dive of the Stock Market--this is just a tip of an iceberg and it is not even the most important one. But about this--later. New bag of popcorn is in order as are safety belts.