Was Difficult To Imagine Otherwise.

Pretty clear. 

МОСКВА, 7 мая - РИА Новости. Переговоры России с Украиной возможны на условиях Москвы, при этом готовности как Киева, так и его западных кураторов к переговорному процессу пока не видно, заявил РИА Новости лидер ЛДПР Леонид Слуцкий. "Возможны - на наших условиях. Украина и нацистская идеология, носителем которой этот марионеточный режим является, проигрывает. Поэтому если они готовы к переговорам на наших условиях - полная денацификация, демилитариация и многое другое, что мы уже выдвигали как требование в 2022 году - в этом случае, можно об этом думать", - сказал Слуцкий РИА Новости в ответ на вопрос, возможны ли, на его взгляд, переговоры с Украиной. Он отметил, что пока еще действует указ Владимира Зеленского, который ему самому запрещает любые переговоры.

Translation: MOSCOW, May 7 - RIA Novosti. Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine are possible on Moscow’s terms, while the readiness of both Kyiv and its Western curators for the negotiation process is not yet visible, LDPR leader Leonid Slutsky told RIA Novosti. “Possible - on our terms. Ukraine and the Nazi ideology, of which this puppet regime is the bearer, is losing. Therefore, if they are ready to negotiate on our terms - complete denazification, demilitarization and much more, which we have already put forward as a demand in 2022 - in In this case, we can think about it,” Slutsky told RIA Novosti in response to the question whether, in his opinion, negotiations with Ukraine are possible. He noted that Vladimir Zelensky’s decree is still in force, which prohibits him from any negotiations.

 

I want to remind people who continuously worry about Russia somehow yielding to combined West and starting negotiations. Apart from the obvious ad nauseam statements from Moscow that the West is not ready to negotiate, keep in mind this critical clause--with the consideration of the realities on the ground(c). This is critical, because this is the condition which terrifies West (nobody counts 404 and what it wants), because it is the doorway to de jure unconditional surrender. I am not talking about just geography, I am talking about operational-strategic situation on the theater of operations and we know now that the West exhausted its resources completely. It was de-fanged in the most brutal and merciless manner. It still can send a few tanks or artillery pieces here and there, but proverbial COFM (Correlation of Forces and Means) is decisively on Russia's side. 

 

Now another set of lamentations follows. Walter Russell Mead demonstrates yet again that all those "shiny" degrees in "strategy" from any US higher learning institutions aren't worth shit and are nothing more than degrees in hodgepodge collection of military-political facts, much of which are not even facts at all. Walter Russel Mead is a classic example of such ignoramus--a requirement for writing for WSJ. 

The Houthis May Embolden Beijing. In the Indo-Pacific, doubts emerge that the U.S. can manage simultaneous crises.

Seriously? Somebody has to explain to those "academics" that it is fucking 2024 and not 1924 with those magnificent iron ships of the line with their 16 inch guns blowing the shit out of defenseless tribes. The United States wanted the war--she's got one. Technological reality is a bitch and two can play the game of proxies. If you know what I mean. Recall this wonderful definition of the change in the negotiating position:

Did Walter Russel Mead and his colleagues shyster-"strategists" watch this wonderful movie? It is very instructive. 

They Confabulate...

This is the only thing they can do. 

Russia—after suffering Western oil embargos and price caps on its oil and oil products, has shipped its first crude oil cargo to Brazil in its quest to find more outlets for its fossil fuels. The Aframax tanker Stratos Aurora is now less than 500 miles off the shore of Brazil, according to Bloomberg ship tracking data, carrying 650,000 barrels of Varandey crude oil from the Murmansk port. Russian oil hasn’t been shipped to Brazil since 2016, but sanctions on Russian crude oil, as well as the price cap, have made it difficult for the country to find outlets. 

I just returned from Russia and nowhere did I find any signs of "suffering". On the contrary, Russians overwhelmingly praise sanctions. It is also difficult to explain to average Western "academic" or journo that Russia is absolutely free in her decisions on oil output and goes about it as she wishes. If London and Washington want to send ships to "enforce" the price cap--they are welcome, let them see what happens. We all know that nothing could be done and price cap failed the first day it was introduced. Now, Russia and SA extended their output cut and here we are today. 

Meanwhile, Daniel Larison reacts to Walter Russel Mead's wet fantasies of "wearing Russia down". It has to be reiterated again that Mead is not an academic but shyster from what WSJ calls geopolitics, but let Larison speak:

Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead thinks that the right way to wear down Russia in a war of attrition is by attacking Russian interests in far-flung, peripheral areas around the world. Mead claims that “we operate in a target-rich environment” for bringing the “cost of war home to the Kremlin,” and he lays out a series of policies that are either unworkable, counterproductive or useless. Among other things, he calls for the U.S. to “roll up” the Wagner Group in the Sahel, work with Turkey and others to “make Mr. Putin’s presence in Syria ruinously expensive,” bring pressure to bear on Russian forces in Moldova, and “target Mr. Putin’s Latin American allies.”

Even assuming that it was practical and wise for the U.S. to do any of these things, it is hard to see how they would significantly impair Russia’s war effort or aid Ukraine in a war of attrition. If the U.S. managed to make things difficult enough for Russian forces and mercenaries in other parts of the world that it was no longer worth it for Moscow to keep them there, that would just lead to additional resources and manpower being redirected to fighting in Ukraine. It isn’t clear why Mead believes that the U.S. and “its allies in Europe and the Gulf” have the capabilities to eliminate Russian influence in the Sahel. French influence is in retreat in many countries, U.S. partners keep losing control in military coups, and so-called “allies” from the Gulf are not reliably on the same side as the U.S. in political and military crises across Africa. The problem wasn’t that the U.S. and its allies were “standing passively by” but that they were actively pursuing militarized policies that have repeatedly blown up in their faces. Russia has managed to exploit some of the resulting upheaval to its advantage.

Well, I have the answer why creatures like Mead, and even many in the outlet Larison published piece in--Responsible Statecraft--believe this. The answer is simple--99% "degrees" from US universities in history, political science, journalism, economics and other subjects like that are fraud and disqualify overwhelming majority of their bearers from any serious discussion on the subject matter, such as REAL strategy, warfare, resources management and the military history of the XX century. Mead is just a propagandist who has no tool kit to grasp those things, as for Russia Study field--I repeat myself ad nauseam. There is NO such field in the US anymore. 

I guess, the unpleasant truth of the US losing economic race to China and military one to Russia will take some time to get internalized, possibly by new US political elites, but even if to assume that, as many report (in Russian), Blinken was in Kiev trying to force Ze to the negotiating table with Russia, one has to keep in mind that Russia has no reasons whatsoever to negotiate anything with Kiev. Election cycle in the US is of no concern to Russia who has written Washington off no matter who comes to power. As for Mead--I have a suggestion, instead of "teaching" Clausewitz and Strategy, he may take basic classes on WWII history, not the BS he teaches, and how real economy works. I do not expect him succeeding studying modern warfare--too complex and requires graduate STEM degree (and clearance), but he may try. Hey, at 60 I learned some basic chords on piano and even know how to play The House of the Rising Sun. But, in all seriousness, most of US "geopolitical" and "strategy" academy should be fired and given jobs as greeters at the Walmart's entrances.

Fifteen Years Ago...

... on this date: 080808.  

The date Russia has made first statement about her arriving back from the near death. I recall all those "military experts", especially a bunch of shysters from Russia, promising that Russians will be defeated because US "trained" Georgian Army. US learned absolutely nothing since then. We all know thee result of that 5-day war. US "trained" Army disintegrated when faced with real combined arms. 

This is the type of human trash the US views as its "allies". 

But today something begins to trickle down even into the sewer of American media and clueless politicos:

Read my lips, you also may quote me on that: there is NO understanding of modern war in the US across the board, including most of American military. There is also NO serious strategist in the US who has a clear view of the formation of balance of power and how serious militaries write their doctrines. That is why I see sincere attempts by Daniel Larison to challenge one of the leading American "strategists" as misplaced and having all signs of the Sisyphus Labor.

Walter Russell Mead sells a pack of lies:

President Barack Obama was the Great Denialist in geopolitics, temporizing and tap dancing, appeasing and apologizing as an axis of anti-American revisionist powers consisting of China, Russia, Iran and their satellites stepped up their resistance and began to coordinate policies.

If anyone is being a revisionist here, it’s Mead with his wildly distorted description of Obama’s foreign policy record. Obama got many things wrong as president from Libya to Yemen, but the idea that he spent his eight years “appeasing and apologizing” while an “axis” of revisionists emerged is nothing but lazy propaganda from a bad analyst. The old lie of Obama’s imaginary “apology tour” is still with us almost fifteen years later, and it is even more ridiculous now than it was then. 

The US has only a handful of people, who also are the exception to the rule of a wholesale sheer military illiteracy, who are capable of speaking on and understanding how actual strategy is developed and implemented. Walter Russel Mead is not one of them. 99% of America's "strategists" are people with NO systemic military education, knowledge of history and the only skill those people have as the result of their "degrees" in the so called "strategic studies" from Ivy League humanities degree mills is juxtaposing of carefully selected facts. Walter Russel Mead has degree in English Literature from Yale and never served a day in any military or intel capacity. So, the fact that he teaches Clausewitz and Sun Tzu's one-liners in the times of neural networks, space-based ISR and hyper-sonic weapons whose physics and math he cannot possibly understand, tells you everything you need to know about America's "Strategy" academe. It also explains why those are incapable of talking in anything but pseudo-strategic platitudes--a euphemism for BS. 

In other words, Mead has zero qualifications for speaking and writing on modern geopolitics and strategy, because to do so one has to have the tool kit of looking at strategy in conjunction with operational level--two levels at which wars are won or lost and which require the depth. And that's the point I make for years--one cannot continue to merely challenge the BS fountaining from the deep recesses of US "academia" and think-tankdom, one has to challenge qualifications, that is to say start operating in the ad hominem mode, when dealing with a cabal of uncultured, unread, illiterate Ph.D shysters who toil for the benefit of America's homicidal foreign policy and military adventurism. Yes, they lie, but many of them sincerely believe those lies. That is why the ONLY American real strategist of true international repute, Alfred Thayer Mahan, was a graduate of the US Naval Academy, has been a cadre naval officer with combat experience all his life, and retired in the rank of Admiral. 

Military degrees and experiences in and of themselves do not guarantee from stupidity and fraud, enough to look at US generals at the so called ISW, or read US "doctrinal" documents, but it is time to finally start calling all those white board "strategists", who wouldn't know how operations are planned or insulate themselves from inconvenient facts of the America's grossly exaggerated military history, for what they are--frauds and shysters who know only pseudo-military verbiage and have no clue about the real history of the last two centuries. And it was on this date fifteen years ago when they have been taught the first lesson in real continental combined arms warfare. 

Or, as quoting Lieutenant-General Klokotov, at the time of the Gulf War the chief of the Strategy Department of Academy of the General Staff (guess from three times if "strategist" Mead and ilk will be even able to pass entrance exams there): 

“I would like to emphasize here that the Persian Gulf war was taken as the standard in studying the strategic nature of possible war. It would appear that this position, adopted in the draft ‘Fundamentals of Russian Military Doctrine,’ is dangerous. The fact is that this war [was] ‘strange’ in all respects [and] cannot serve as a standard.”

On August 8th, 2008 Russian Armed Forces started their healing and return to their proper shape allowing them to fight and defeat  combined NATO forces. The rest is history, but they don't teach it in the US anymore.