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.    

Lavrov, Help! Again!

In the kingdom run by imbeciles this is possible, in fact it increasingly becomes not only highly probable but reaches a finite probability of happening of 1, or of 100%. 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers of both parties are pressuring the White House to extend the last remaining restraints on U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons deployments by demanding intelligence assessments on the costs of allowing the New START treaty to lapse. The demands, contained in three bills that may be harmonized this week, reflect doubts about whether the Trump administration has done sufficient analytical work on how China and Russia may respond to the 2010 treaty's expiration in February 2021. New START restricted the United States and Russia to deploying no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads, the lowest level in decades, and limited the land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers that deliver them. It can be renewed for up to five years if both sides agree. Moscow has offered to immediately extend the treaty. Washington still is considering the issue. U.S. President Donald Trump and his aides have argued that New START does not cover all Russian nuclear weapons and said they want to bring China, which they increasingly view as the primary, long-term threat, into a wider arms control framework. Some lawmakers and arms control experts view the proposal as a "poison pill" to kill New START, ending restraints on U.S. strategic nuclear weapons deployments, because China rejects the idea.

Firstly, these cretins do all they can to sabotage any kind of cooperation with Russia, including by means of national treason, accusing already incompetent POTUS of being Putin's personal asset, no less. Then they accuse Russia of some absolutely bizarre Orwellian shit, they insult Russia and Russian people non-stop and now, all of a sudden it dawns on at least some of them that you need to talk to Russia on START issues and you need to do it soon. La-dee-fvcking-da. Secondly, China is not interested and rightly so, she is nowhere near Russian and American levels of strategic weapons and any attempts to include China into START are foolhardy at best. Trump and his infested with neocons and chicken-hawks administration might have been more-or-less flexible and reasonable on this issue if not  the position POTUS was put into thanks to House's own crowd of psychopaths who do sincerely believe that Russia is evil incarnate. Any attempts by POTUS to find sensible strategic weapons accommodations with Russia will inevitably be interpreted as an impeachable offense. 

But thirdly, some "revelations", Putin did offer inclusion of Kinzhal and Poseidon into discussion on extension of START. It is obvious that Russia is not going to refuse these programs, especially when Kinzhal is already in its full combat capability and is operationally deployed. But Russia will be willing to discuss some limitations on these systems in numbers and a mode of deployment, What Russia is NOT going to negotiate is her brand new Sarmat and, such technologies as Peresvet. And here is one interesting speculative (read attentively--spe-cu-la-ti-ve) point I want to make. I seldom speculate but here it is, from the news piece:

Lawmakers, congressional aides and former officials say they are unaware of the administration conducting any formal intelligence estimates of the implications of New START's expiration either before or after Trump unveiled the idea. Nor are they aware of extensive inter-agency deliberations on devising a negotiating stance with China, or even whether any negotiations with China have occurred.

I am positive there are some estimates but they are not released because this will create a massive political crisis (not that this Impeachment catastrophe is not bad enough) when it will be disclosed that the United States lost any edge in strategic weapons and lost arms race and are absolutely not defended from any strike. Russia's interest in START is purely security driven--the fewer nuclear weapons the United States have smaller is the probability of this technology going "rogue". Economic consideration is the important secondary one--Russia simply doesn't want to spent more money than necessary on matters of defense, while maintaining a serious technological edge. Ah yes, Peresvet. This month, Peresvet is officially combat deployed (in Russian). As Valery Gerasimov described this system when talking to military attaches from many nations:

«С начала декабря месяца осуществляется боевое дежурство лазерных комплексов "Пересвет" в позиционных районах подвижных грунтовых ракетных комплексов с задачей прикрытия их маневренных действий»

Translation: since the beginning of December laser combat complexes Peresvet are combat deployed in the positional areas of the mobile ground missile complexes (ICBMs) in order to cover for their maneuvers. 

This is a very "loaded" statement for a reasons which pull very slightly the veil of secrecy over Peresvet's capabilities. There was very little doubt, once Peresvet was unveiled, that it would be more than capable to "blind" just about anything out there and, very likely, even recon satellites. But here is a trick--positional areas of mobile missile complexes such as RS-24 Yars, are a highest priority targets for US counter-force strategic weapons in first strike (Russia is not going to attack first). One can totally conceive here that in case of (God forbids) exchange when the US will lose targeting data from her recon satellite it wouldn't take much to launch at the positional area into the "last known" position of such system as Yars. Take the best case scenario of Yars' vehicles immediately reaching (not likely in real life) their maximum speed of 45 km/hr and having a map of possible roads of area, plus around 25-30 minutes of flight time by missile, so we are looking at a sector of the circle with the radius of 20 kilometers which could easily be "forked" by a few MIRVs from Trident-II D single missile. Do you get my drift? Yes, Peresvet is there to not just fight satellites, it is to allow all those mobile Topols and Yarses to launch undisturbed by means of not allowing MIRVs to get to them. How? Don't ask me. Russians, however, already announced that modernized and much more compact Peresvet will be paraded at the Red Square on May 9, very soon (in Russian). And this statement is also loaded. 

Ask yourself a question now, how can one present US political top with an intelligence "assessment" which blows out of the water the whole notion of the American technological superiority, especially in the field which all those war-mongering creatures who never served a day in military uniform love to masturbate to--modern warfare. It is not Russia's capabilities, now generally well-known, and discussed million times in US media, in a feeble attempt to self-medicate, which matter, it is the lack of such in the US. Yes, of course, the United States still can annihilate the world several times over, the US Navy can still wreck havoc on the geographic fringe of any continent but that doesn't change the fact that if such a calamity visits upon the humanity, the United States will be annihilated with 100% probability under any existing scenario of global conflict, that is when the United States initiates it. Others will not do such a thing globally, certainly not Russia. In this particular case it becomes clear that it is both in US and world's interests to see START extended, if not--I write about "Revelation Mode" non-stop for the last couple of years. 

Just to add to this topic. US News And World Report just recently published (yet another) power ranking of the nations. Russia came in second, obviously, behind the US. I just want to say--imbeciles: nations with GDP of $1.6 trillion do not make what Russia makes, especially in military field, and, yes, China's GDP is not $12.2 trillions, China's real economy dwarfs that of the US. But that just underscores my point--US elites are incompetent, ignorant and are not fit to run the country which they continue to push into the abyss. As long as the stock market driven by buybacks grows, I am sure, everything will be OK, right?