Can NATO...

 ... handle defeat? 

The answer is simple--NO, it cannot. I understand that Tony Shaffer is "against corruption", against this "stupid war" et al, we all are, but it is too late now to step away from the precipice of what can only be defined as America's realistic view of herself in the last 80 years. As I repeat ad nauseam--the roots of the chaos we live through today are on the battlefields of WW II and the insane speed with which the history of WW II has been rewritten in the West to fit its "democracy" narrative. The ideological imperatives of the Cold War 1.0 played a cruel joke on the United States and eventually THE narrative became a reality for the US ruling class. And now we all see not only American military power myth dissipate, but we see clearly the nature of the West's ruling class as... if you expect me to use terms like incompetent, evil et al, no, we knew this already--they are children who decided to play games adults play. And play they did and now they see their toys thrown away and as mischievous children being pointed by adults towards corner--for punishment.  

I want to remind you Michael Brenner's precise diagnosis:

Americanism provides a Unified Field Theory of self-identity, collective enterprise, and the Republic’s enduring meaning. When one element is felt to be in jeopardy, the integrity of the whole edifice becomes vulnerable. In the past, American mythology energized the country in ways that helped it to thrive. Today, it is a dangerous hallucinogen that traps Americans in a time warp more and more distant from reality. There is a muted reflection of this strained condition in the evident truth that Americans have become an insecure people. They grow increasingly anxious about who they are, what they are worth and what life will be like down the road.

There was good in America and it did thrive until... it bought into own narrative. And here is a contrast.

A young marine, Hero of Russia, answering the question what did he get the highest honor the Motherland can give for, simply answers: for the love to Motherland and moving paperwork in the staff. No bravado, no chest thumping. You cannot defeat these people, as I warned for many years--these are adults because they know what they are fighting for and what price to be paid. I can only repeat, I lost the count how many times, what is being said from highest podiums to among simple people in the streets--Russia cannot be defeated on the battlefield, period. Historic Russia, certainly, lost some battles but inevitably she proved Clausewitz' dictum that the result in the war is never final better than anyone in history, because in the end, she won her wars. 

Meanwhile, no matter how evil, children will be children. 

The whole world is to blame for Ukraine’s failure to stop Russia’s recent advances in Kharkov Region and must now help Kiev to change the situation, President Vladimir Zelensky told ABC News in an interview on Thursday. It comes after Russian forces managed to capture several settlements near Ukraine’s second-largest city over the past week. Top military officials in Kiev have admitted that the situation is now “extremely difficult,” and that Ukrainian troops are struggling to hold ground due to being outgunned and outnumbered. Asked if he believes Ukraine’s failures on the battlefield to be the fault of the US, Zelensky told ABC reporters that “it’s the world’s fault,” and accused the international community of giving “the opportunity for Putin to occupy.”

I will share with you a secret of sorts--how I wish Tom Clancy was still alive.

Never In the Ballpark.

I get it, alright, it is all done with the best of the intentions. Plus, The American Conservative, despite its gaping holes in knowledge of Russia, tries to position itself as a "realist" publication, and once in a while they do produce a sound idea or two, but in general they suffer from the same ailment characteristic to most modern "intellectual" publications--a complete inadequacy of experiences past and of understanding a modern world beyond the bounds of a few popular talking points such as West's moral decay and "economy" and "diplomacy". It is a feature now, even of those who position themselves as Anglo-American "realists", or, even, people who try to find some higher moral meaning in the chaos of a contemporary Western politics. 

Anatol Lieven is a fine example of a field which I personally do not even consider a viable realm of expertise or study on any issue pertaining what we all know today as geopolitics and one would expect Lieven, who has a Ph.D in precisely this fraudulent political "science" to have issues with adequately grasping the modern day reality. Lieven is extensively quoted in the article in the said TAC by Bradley Delvin who is extremely critical of this:

Over a dozen House Republicans recently signed a letter to President Joe Biden encouraging the president to take stronger military action to help Ukraine defend itself against the possibility of further Russian intervention. While the Biden administration has not gone as far as these House Republicans would like, which is essentially impossible given an election year is just around the corner, the foreign policy establishment continues to make miscalculations that could become more than costly in the event of further escalation with Russia.   

It is all fine and dandy, and I agree that those republicans are essentially neocons and that the US Congress is a collection of primarily bruised egos and war-mongers. We shouldn't be surprised with that--it is a well-established fact. What is fascinating that while speaking about "miscalculations" and, obviously, self-defeating policies, Delvin gives a wide berth to Lieven's "interpretations", which in many respects prove without a shadow of a doubt that "miscalculations", if not delusions are as wide-spread among the so called Anglo-American "realists" as they are among neocons. I'll start with Lieven's rather wrong assessment of the situation of NS2. This is not to say that Russia doesn't care, of course she does and wants NS2 to work--it goes without saying. But Lieven thinks that:

“The biggest deterrent by far is the threat of greatly intensified sanctions,” Lieven said. “Russia is anxious about its Nord Stream pipeline to Germany. Clearly in the event of a new war with Ukraine, that simply stops and goes out the window, and there are many, many more things that the U.S. or Europe could do that could harm Russia very badly in terms of its economic well-being.”

I don't know what Lieven's qualifications are for this type of conclusions, but he obviously contradicts a number of Russian experts, not least of them Rostislav Ischenko, a former employee of Ukraine's Government and a man who is situationally aware on the issues of Ukraine and NS2 order of magnitude better than Lieven will ever be, who in unison (I am one of those) repeat the point for years, that since roughly 2016-17 and on, the sabotage of the NS2, if it succeeds, means merely a discomfort for Russia which will be overcome, while for Germany and  Europe it will be a catastrophe. I wrote so much about it for years, just type Nord Stream 2 in search bar in this blog. Moreover, I don't know how Lieven missed an obvious major shift of Russia's hydrocarbons' extraction and processing industry away from western borders towards the Far East. Everybody sees it, evidently not Lieven.

But that is not the main issue, in the end, if Europe wants to commit suicide it is not for Russia to prevent it. But Lieven decides to wax all strategic and military and says this:

“If America was planning to seriously prepare for a ground war with Russia, it would have to re-deploy tens or hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops to Europe with full air cover, and station them in European countries, which might very well not be willing to receive them,” Lieven told TAC. “In addition, this would mean either preparing to fight a war of two fronts simultaneously with China and Russia, because if the United States goes to war with Russia, there can be no doubt whatsoever that China would move to take Taiwan the next day, and the U.S. would have to either fight on two fronts, give up on one front, or lose on both fronts.”

I deliberately highlight and underline what Liven states on the size of the force the United States will need to fight a "ground war" with Russia.  It is not a detail which could be attributed to my nit-picking. It is not, it is very serious when a person who is viewed by many as an "expert" makes such a gaffe. Of course, I don't know WHY the United States will fight a "ground war" with Russia, I presume in Ukraine, but Lieven better ask Andrew Bacevich, his boss in Quincy Institute, and a former cadre officer (Colonel) of the US Army with combat experience. Maybe, I am not saying it will happen with 100% probability, he explains to Lieven what force will be needed to "fight" Russia near Russia's borders. 

Of course, a lot depends on HOW the victory will be defined by the US, but judging by Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan (among many others) it could be defined anywhere between total and partial defeats inflicted by enemies on the US. Russia, however, is a bit different case here, EVEN if we assume that the US will not escalate to a nuclear threshold after a week or two of fighting this "ground war". Even if we assume that both sides do not use nukes, be them tactical or strategic, the purely conventional "ground war" against Russia in Ukraine will require at least one million of combat troops on the American side, granted Russia will even allow those to be shipped to Europe. I am, however, not 100% positive on the "cut off" number of the US troops (it could be 200,000 or somewhere near 400,000) concentrating in Europe before Russia will blow to smithereens most of the ports capable to receive US transports and then simply destroy airfields with whatever will be there. 

I wrote about those wet dreams by US a few years ago. There, Ochmanek, evidently, was pulling numbers, pardon my French, out of his ass, still being enamored by a turkey shoot of a backward Iraqi Army. But exactly two years later he dramatically, to his credit, changed his tune and admitted:

We lose a lot of people. We lose a lot of equipment. We usually fail to achieve our objective of preventing aggression by the adversary,” RAND analyst David Ochmanek told a security conference on Thursday. “In our games, when we fight Russia and China, blue gets its ass handed to it.”

Unsurprisingly, those admissions came on the heels of Vladimir Putin's address to Federal Assembly on 1March 2018 whose historic significance many people still cannot grasp. So, yes, million(s) of US (NATO) combat troops if NATO decides to commit suicide conventionally and see Washington and European Capitals' government quarters in ruins. There is no worse than some Ivy League or Oxford Ph.D in political "science" beginning to wax military and "miscalculating" by order of magnitude on the scale of force and, hence, slaughterhouse which will unfold if the US decides to fight a ground war with a "peer" and not some illiterate Arab soldier or Taliban. This is not a "miscalculation, it is a tour de force of military ignorance which defines modern Western politicum be they from "realist" wing or the neocon one. They better listen to this, again, between 7:00 and 16:00 minutes and see reactions of his political "science" interlocutors. 

I will elaborate on the required force when speaking on the Salvo Model and why even million plus troops even within purely conventional scenario in Ukraine will not prevent NATO from sustaining catastrophic defeat accompanied by catastrophic losses in people and in materiel. I am not even going to discuss mobilization policies and measures of Russia, of which Lieven has very little, if any, understanding. But even Wilkerson fails to grasp what real modern conventional war is--he can't, US never fought a peer since 1945 on the ground successfully without several overwhelming advantages in technology. Well... even speaking in generalities has to have a well defined and competent point, which at least provides a ballpark accuracy to a point one wants to get across with whatever intentions.   

P.S. Wilkerson spoke about "ultimately winning", he really needs to refresh his memory on American wars of the 20th century. 

Making a "No Shit" Headline Permanent...For a While.

Somebody begins to suspect something. WaPo reports. 

The footage of rifle-toting Taliban fighters occupying the presidential palace and rolling up the Afghan national flag stood as a defining image of a failed U.S. effort to transform Afghan society at the cost of a trillion dollars and thousands of lives lost. “Decades from now, these images will be invoked as a vivid example of the limits of U.S. power, and of its inability to fight modern wars effectively or to end them on favorable terms,” said Michael Kugelman, an Afghanistan scholar at the Wilson Center.

Expect a lot of trite self-evident BS like this occupying the first pages of the West's media in coming weeks, with "scholars" expressing their opinions which are worthless in any practical sense. In related news, the sky is blue, water is wet etc. For Kugelman personally--learn about real war, in spare time, you know. The problem, of course, is deeper, much deeper than obvious humiliation of the United States. French globalist rag Le Figaro concludes (in an obvious attempt at numbing a profound butt-hurt) that even America's traditional competitors or enemies such as Russia, China or Iran are not joyful from America's failure. At this stage I need to make "No Shit" headline permanent. No, Russia is not "enjoying" America's humiliation, because real geopolitics and national interests do not work like this. By the "do not work like this" I mean a two-bit sublimation by Western "academe" of own complexes into pseudo-scientific dick-measuring contests in matters in which they have no even minimal competencies--a defining feature of modern West's (pseudo) "intellectual" class. Real great powers care about order and predictability, not some clusterfuck which is left by the United States anywhere it goes to "promote democracy".

Phil Giraldi wrote an excellent piece on this matter, namely American ambassadorship using a pseudo-"scholar" and certified clown Michael McFaul as an example, and stated:

Whenever one gets into discussions about the decline of America’s ability to positively influence developments around the world a number of issues tend to surface. First is the hubristic claim by successive presidents that the United States is somehow “exceptional” as a polity while also serving as the world’s only superpower and also the anointed Leader of the Free World, whatever that is supposed to mean. Some critics of the status quo also have been willing to look a bit deeper, recognizing that it is the policies being pursued by the White House and Congress that are out of sync with what is actually happening in Asia, Africa and Latin America, being more driven by establishing acceptable narratives than by genuine interests.     

Not only the United States doesn't have a diplomacy, as a tool of a statecraft, in any operational sense, it fails in something which is even more important--intelligence. As the events in Afghanistan have shown, US "intelligence" estimate on Kabul being able to hold on for "around 90 days" was not just bad, which is always the case in the last few decades, but it was obviously a figment of imagination, and not a good one at that. Recall Patrick Armstrong's: 

NO, YOUR INTELLIGENCE IS ACTUALLY BAD. VERY BAD.

Or Margarita Simonyan's famous address to the US:

I’ve been telling you for a long time to find normal advisers on Russia. Sack all those parasites.

They will not, and they will continue to believe own BS, because if they will stop deluding themselves, they will have to live with unbearable facts of their responsibility for what they have done around the world and to own country which is...well, read my latest book. Russia is not "enjoying" because she will have to deal with Taliban on a state level as Afghanistan's legitimate government, but Taliban's first actions, including immediately providing good security for Russian diplomats in Kabul, is a promising sign (in Russian). Obviously some arrangements need to be made, including regarding the fate of ISIS cells (courtesy of the US and British "corridor" for them from Syria) in Afghanistan who need to be eradicated, plus there are issues with Al Qaeda. Russia is in waiting. If Taliban puts Afghanistan under full control and will provide law (well, Sharia is THE law) and order, including, as they already conveyed to Moscow, observing human rights, Russia will remove the title of "terrorist organization" from Taliban, which will open some interesting perspectives for Kabul. Taliban DOES know this--emerging Eurasian market is extremely promising for all participants. 

As current Russian meme states:       

"We will not allow to turn Afghanistan into Ukraine--this is how Taliban explained main motive for their Blitzkrieg". 

Remarkably, there is a lot of truth in it. As Douglas Macgregor bitterly states:

All that can be said with certainty is that between 2001 and 2021, none of the senior officers expressed opposition to the policies of intervention and occupation strongly enough to warrant their removal. None felt compelled to leave the service and take their opposing views to the public forum. When it became clear that the collective strategies and tactics in Afghanistan and Iraq were failing, not only General David Petraeus, but most of America’s senior military leaders chose to prevaricate and distort facts in public to show progress when there was none. How many American lives might have been saved had someone only told the truth will never be known. There is no getting around it. America’s senior civilian and military leaders (together with their supporting service bureaucracies) are fundamentally incapable of developing or implementing effective military strategy.

They can't tell the truth, because:

And that was the case for a long time in America and that is a true "No Shit" moment. They will learn nothing. 

 

UPDATE: for those who are interested--the interview of Boris Gromov to Vzglyad (In Russian). Use Google Translate--it is worth it.