Nebenzya will make a complete idiot out of this guy in UN publicly. DJT, of course, couldn't foresee that the neocon trash he imported into his admin will sabotage him/s. And while everyone discusses the "mineral deal" which has no meaning for reality on the ground, Nikolai Patrushev makes an important comment on upcoming BaltOps 25:
Translation:NATO is practicing scenarios involving the seizure of the Kaliningrad region and preemptive strikes on nuclear arsenals during exercises near the Russian border.This was stated in an interview with TASS by the Russian presidential aide and head of the Naval Collegium Nikolai Patrushev.According to him, the North Atlantic Alliance is holding the largest exercises in recent decades for the second year, "in which it is practicing scenarios of offensive actions over a large area - from Vilnius to Odessa, the seizure of the Kaliningrad region, blocking shipping in the Baltic and Black Seas, and preemptive strikes on the permanent bases of Russian nuclear deterrent forces."
While I am on record for decades now that it is conventional power which matters in military affairs--the competition NATO has lost--yesterday Ania asked me a pointed question: how many nukes it will take to "calm" NATO down. It goes without saying that Russia can sink every NATO fleet in Baltic conventionally, but it must be understood--any real move on Kaliningrad means immediate nuclear response, including at NATO's military political top. Conventionally, NATO (US included) is a paper tiger, but considering a complete insanity of European political "elites", turning some of the European and UK sites into parking lot could become necessary. We, of course, can discuss after that the algorithm of escalation (or de-escalation) after initial "lesson", but Russia can go with her own version of the Ledeen Doctrine: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” Rephrase it in accordance with present situation from Russian point of view and the list of candidates pops up immediately. I'll give you a hint--the US will do nothing.
Leopold the Cat was appealing to his adversary mice non-stop. Guys, let's live like friends. But in the end, he had to take Ozverin pills to calm things down.
It IS boosting of naval capabilities but, as WSJ reports in a classic chutzpah move:
Meanwhile, the proposal is said to have its own issues. The US would
reportedly need to spend billions of dollars to expand submarine
production capabilities on American soil, although Australia is
supposedly expected to contribute to these efforts.
You see? Not only Australia will buy those subs, she will help to build shipbuilding capacity. They say 2030 is a the target date, we'll see about that, considering a horrendous economic dynamics in the Western world, but then again--who knows at this stage. In funny news, however, this stands out. As RIAFAN reports:
Translation:The Pentagon has developed a military strategy for the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Zaporozhye region. The offensive plan would be “suicidal” for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said Volodymyr Rogov, chairman of the “We are with Russia” movement. The strategy proposed by the United States involves forcing the Dnieper with the help of landings and pontoon crossings, the interlocutor told the Ukraina.ru portal. These attacks will result in thousands of deaths for Ukraine, which the Ukrainian military understands, Rogov believes. “But the military is well aware that this is suicide. Therefore, their army is already trying in every possible way to move away from this, ”he stressed.
That sounds about right, considering Pentagon's "stellar" operational experiences and seeing who represents it today in the public realm, ranging from BSer admiral Kirby to people of Keane or Petraeus' military "qualities", it is totally conceivable to expect shit like that being viewed as a viable "strategy". Recall Bismark's quip (allegedly he stated that):
“Never fight with Russian. On your every stratagem they answer unpredictable stupidity.”
Should Bismark have been alive today and could observe the last 80 years of the development of "strategies", especially by NATO, he surely would have rephrased his quote and you all know how. In general, the VSU C2-ed by the US was busy last few months with what Douglas Macgregor terms as the "impaling of Ukraine reserves" on Russian troops. So, you get the picture. In the end, as I repeat this ad nauseam, one has to know what REAL war and operational planning against top notch opponent is--the experience Pentagon simply doesn't have. But that issue of the military school of thought and how it develops had many volumes written about by people who, unlike me, commanded real armies and army groups in strategic level operations or campaigns.
Now with 300,000 Russians being mobilized, the picture of the larger objectives for Russia begins to emerge and this is a very bad news for NATO and its leader--the United States. The whole "rules based order", a euphemism for the American hegemony, is being disassembled as I type this. We may discuss here the actual meaning of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, but there is very little doubt that the way United Nations operates today is indicative of a totally paralyzed structure corrupted by the West top-bottom and as such must be either reformed or completely abolished. But this is the task for real global shakers and movers led by Russia. Meanwhile, referenda in former Ukraine continue despite Kiev regime and its sponsors from D.C. and Brussels doing all they can to kill as many civilians as possible in the act of intimidation, but that is not having any effect on proceedings.
Tucker Carlson gave a splendid interview to a Swiss daily Die Weltwoche, I think it is very much worth it to read it. Tucker is realist and he is ready to face facts. I do not agree with some of his positions, but his assessments of Trump are spot on.
Then he proceeds with a good thought on the current situation:
Have you ever seen this amount of discontent and aggression here in your lifetime?
No, I've never seen anything like this. What's so striking
is that [chuckles] this is really... The radicalism is not on behalf of
people who are actually suffering, fellow Americans who are suffering,
on behalf of the 70,000 people who died of drug ODs last year, or on
behalf of the people displaced by automation in GM, or whatever, on
behalf of those dying American low class, it's really on behalf of
theoretical goals. They're saying that I [Tucker Carlson] am saying naughty
things that shouldn't be allowed to be expressed in public. Basically,
it's a totalitarian movement. Totally unhelpful. I would say childish.
What they're really doing is defending the current order. They're the
shock troops of the elites actually. Actually, what you're seeing is
something amazing, you're seeing for the first time in history a
revolution being waged against the working class. When does that happen?
It is a huge issue in itself and the roots of this are in the Cold War 1.0. We ain't seen nothing yet. He astutely notes.
If you leave Washington and drive to say Pittsburgh, which is a
manufacturing town about three and a half hours to the west, you drive
through a series of little towns that are devastated. There are no car
dealerships, there are no restaurants. There's nothing. They have not
recovered. I remember driving out there one day, maybe eight or nine
years ago and thinking, boy, this is a disaster. Rural America, America
outside three or four cities is really falling apart. I thought if
you're running the country, you should have a sense of that. I remember
thinking to myself, nobody I know has any idea that this is happening an
hour away. That's kind of strange since we're the capital city in
charge of making policy for everybody else... Massive inequality does
not work in a democracy... You become Venezuela.
So, read it. It may help in tying together all these crazy events happening right now, including a disaster of the American (rather her "elites") foreign policy run by neocon ignoramuses, who are not qualified to ran a local hardware store. Speaking of which, Daniel Larison laments what he fails to understand IS the level of American "elites" (which echoes Tucker's opinions on them)--they are massively ignorant and incompetent. But I stood on this position for many years now. Not only they are a danger for the world, they are dangerous to their own (???) country.
Can we finally say it out loud--there is NOBODY out there who is qualified to govern competently. The Ivy League and political clubs' "elite-manufacturing" machine is broken long ago--it was bound to happen when one teaches instead of real history a collection of fairy tales. The system is broken and it will take some incredible effort and mind(s) to figure out how to fix it without unleashing a bloodshed. Facing reality could be a good start.
When one will write the real history of the 20th and early 21st century, as long as this person would maintain even rudimentary scholarship and objectivity, one will have to stress one of the major history's truisms--scale and proportions matter a great deal. In fact, they define how history unfolds. In this respect, US Ambassador to UN Samantha Power is a great demonstrator of a major reason (one of several) for why the United States found herself in the position it is today. This is not a good position, to put it mildly. In her last (yesterday) press-conference in UN Security Council, during her incoherent babbling about Russia, Power repeated the old and fundamental myth of American politics of the last 70 years.
And here is the issue: each time I hear, from many corners, that United States "defeated" "communism" (remember this? "You lost, we won") or, let alone, that US defeated Nazism (Fascism, etc.), I am forced to ask a question. The question is: have anyone in US political class ever tried to claim credit for Sunrises (and Sunsets) or for change in the seasons, you know--to issue a medal "For Changing Summer Into Autumn"? Each time when I hear that somebody "defeated Soviet Union", I try to recall desperately when was the parade of "victors" held on the Red Square? The degree of idiocy of the US elites' post-Cold War triumphalism is astonishing.It is especially noticeable against the background of contemporary Russia trying to stem the flow of all those "liberated" nations into Russia, and here we are talking about millions upon millions people. So much for the "liberty". What is also strange about those claims is that the ability of Russian Federation to annihilate most of the world on the eve of dissolution of USSR didn't change after its dissolution. Obviously, the fact that multicultural empires do not live long, and that is how (primarily) Soviet Union collapsed, is beyond the grasp of people like Power and US political and "intellectual" strata she is the product of. Yes, US did "help" somewhat but metaphysical and material rot of the so called "communism" had very little to do with the United States, whose, accidental material wealth of the second half of 20th Century was based primarily on the outcome of WW II in which the Soviet/Russian contribution to victory in it against Nazism, Fascism, what have you, is overwhelming, both in blood and treasure.
Yes, Power gets to it too in her press-conference and does this, now traditional, lip service to Russian sacrifice, but denying Russian people any agency is a traditional pseudo-intellectual shtick of US "elites" who are desperate for any kind of meaningful "victory". Well, here is the opinion of the man who was and is close to Russia's political top and he, actually, knows Russia inside-out.
The statement of Cold War "victory" flies out of the window once one gets closer to real Soviet History of 1970s and 1980s and understanding of what country that was--the insights neither CIA (yeah, right) nor Soviet "dissidents" (most of them discredited) could and can provide. Russians didn't "surrender" in Cold War, they, as it turned out today, naively thought that the better way was possible and extended "hand of friendship to US. This hand has been slapped away". Or, putting it in layman's lingo, Russians got screwed over and those who BSed naive Russians proclaimed themselves "victors". Now, former influential Congressman Curt Weldon exclaims in desperation: how did we get here, meaning disastrous relations with Russia. Obviously Weldon conveniently "forgets" how NATO moved to Russia's borders (because US was a Cold War "victor") and how American advisers and firms did their utmost to place an alcoholic and West's door mat Yeltsin into Kremlin (all on Weldon's Congressional "watch").
Yeah, Russians, certainly, mustexhibit a very warm feelings towards US "diplomacy" whose only task was and is to lecture Russians on how to do things right, that is how the US defined "right". That is what Power and US "elites" (most of them) represent. It doesn't matter that their triumphalism and false sense of entitlement have no foundation in real life, and those few years in 1990s of controlling Russia's "elites", who would sell their own mother for the grant from US NGOs and would follow just about any insane policy "advice" from their American curators were the acts of high treason towards Russian people. As long as United States was able to re-write the history, it was all good.
American post-Cold War triumphalism is a love child of American exceptionalism which is one of the pillars of American founding. This exceptionalism is not unique, Russians themselves had this "exceptional" thing going for them for a century or three, so had British with their empire "on which the Sun never sets". So were Germans, we all know where this led to. All great nations, and American are a great nation, have this exceptional streak. But American messianic exceptionalism really overdid it, big time. It was a very specific way it overdid it. As Alexis De Tocqueville wrote in his masterpiece "Democracy In America" (Chapter 16): All free nations are vainglorious, but national pride is not displayed
by all in the same manner. The Americans in their intercourse with
strangers appear impatient of the smallest censure and insatiable of
praise. The most slender eulogium is acceptable to them; the most
exalted seldom contents them; they unceasingly harass you to extort
praise, and if you resist their entreaties they fall to praising
themselves. It would seem as if, doubting their own merit, they wished
to have it constantly exhibited before their eyes. Their vanity is not
only greedy, but restless and jealous; it will grant nothing, whilst it
demands everything, but is ready to beg and to quarrel at the same time.
If I say to an American that the country he lives in is a fine one,
“Ay,” he replies, “there is not its fellow in the world.” If I applaud
the freedom which its inhabitants enjoy, he answers, “Freedom is a fine
thing, but few nations are worthy to enjoy it.” If I remark the purity
of morals which distinguishes the United States, “I can imagine,” says
he, “that a stranger, who has been struck by the corruption of all other
nations, is astonished at the difference.” At length I leave him to the
contemplation of himself; but he returns to the charge, and does not
desist till he has got me to repeat all I had just been saying. It is
impossible to conceive a more troublesome or more garrulous patriotism;
it wearies even those who are disposed to respect it (c).
Most of American "elites" live by this rule, it is the thing which makes them tick, it is their clockwork, and with the events of the 20th Century the vanity of American exceptionalism reached a feverish pitch. So much so, that American "elite" started to directly steal and deform history. One of manifestations of such a global brainwashing is the fact thatmost West Europeans today believe that it was the United States which won WW II. The results of such a mythology are an unmitigated disaster, whose embodiment Samantha Power is--arrogant, badly educated, boastful and completely detached from the reality. She is also a fanatic Russophobe. I specifically emphasize here American "elites", those hordes of humanities "educated" offsprings of American coastal well-off class and of Ivy League degree mills. I know American people, met thousands of them and have a deep love and respect to those folks but very many (not all) representatives of the American "intellectual" class is another matter altogether. But it is this "intellectual" and moneyed class who writes the history books and owns media. And the march of American exceptionalism and triumphalism seemed unstoppable by late 1990s. That is for those who didn't know the history. Things changed dramatically in the last 3-4 years and those, yet again, who knew the history and had background could see this change coming afar, I anticipated this, hence this blog. That is those who were not American "intellectual" class--a distinction which needs to be worn with pride today. A Departure of Samantha Power, who is an embarrassment to the highly regarded profession of a diplomat coincided with the wholesale epiphanies by this very American "intellectual" class, that one can lie only for so long, eventually the truth will emerge through empirical evidence.
I wrote about Harlan Ullman's partial sobering--it is partial since he continues to repeat the idiocy about Russia "invading" Ukraine, as an example. Good luck building your conclusions and argumentation on the sand, yet again. Then Professor of Strategy from Naval War College Nicholas Gvozdev got the ball rolling and yesterday he continued with his, finally dawning realization that this very "intellectual" elite pretty much knows nothing about Russia. He offers to rethink American "assumptions" on Russia.No, Mr. Gvozdev "rethinking" assumptions which were a result of a failed American "scholarship", shoddy, if not mostly fraudulent, Russia's "academe" and, in the end, falling into the trap of own, extremely false and arrogant narrative, is not possible at this time. Gvozdev, after making a hodgepodge and very weak argument, calls for: at the end of the day, however, whatever position on Russia wins out
should be rooted in analytically rigorous and dispassionate analysis (c).
I have some news for Nicholas Gvozdev: a "dispassionate" analysis is impossible at this time in the United States because very many of those "analysts" either comprehend or feel that once the "dispassionate" analysis starts, one has to completely throw American exceptionalist and triumphalist mythology out of the window. It kills American messianic narrative and brings to the fore the issue of scales and proportions--the factor which American Samantha "Powers" want desperately to ignore for a simple reason, they know, even if by gut feeling only, they will come out losers. Hence Russophobia. The United States needs a complete overhaul of its corrupt "academe" and revival of a real Russian Studies field, which would be led not by some insane neocon (Pipes) or irrational Russophobe such as Brzezinski, let alone clownish hack such as Macfaul--the damage they did to Russian-American relations and scholaship is vast--but with people who actually bothered to study and understand the subject of their interest. In the end, as even yesterday's piece by Gvozdev shows, without understanding Russian culture, which is immense, and Russian warfare, both of which are two sides of the same coin, any attempt to "study" Russia in the way she was "studied" for the last 70+ years will end up precisely where they ended up today for the United States--on the brink of war with the nation which will not "stand for the cost" when it fights on its own land. Mr. Gvozdev better start his "cost" analysis with studying a real history of WW II. This is a good primer.
As Father Robert Tobias wrote in his remarkable "Heaven On Earth, A Lutheran-Orthodox Odyssey": When of late in this (American) culture we turned our eyes to divine epiphanies, we perceived only two-dimensionality, not great depth. Perhaps that was provisionally inevitable in a culture dominated by two-dimensional television, movies, billboards, cameras and sports events. (c) I have a suggestion for those who really want to perceive a real depth--start with dispassionate study of the Soviet WW II and after history, and not just of GULAG.But most importantly--in this century of global communications and travel, go to Russia, and not Moscow or St.Petersburg only, go talk to Russian people, especially those who are in their 40s and 50s (they run the country) and see for yourself why Russia seeks peace, not war and why, after 1000+ years of her history, she will never again fight on her own land. Have a epiphany.
