I Like This...

 ... because Colonel Wilkerson parades himself as an ignoramus he thinks neocons are--there is no difference. That is why it takes so much effort to explain why Mearsheimer is so ignorant. OK, read my lips--US military "education" is no good. Here is his video (Blogspot, evidently, doesn't want those videos to be published), but here is the guy, who thinks he understands the modern warfare and Russia. You cannot fix this.

 

Ah, Olaf Scholz Got The Message.

Do I feel smug at this moment? Come on, I am just human with all my human flaws, can I allow myself  at least a brief moment of feeling good about myself and what I do? 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Russian President Vladimir Putin prepared for his war on Ukraine for at least a year before inciting it, and predicted Putin is likely to be able to maintain a drawn-out offensive for a "long time." Scholz made the comments in a Thursday interview with CBS News "Face the Nation" moderator and chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan at the NATO summit in Madrid. The war on Ukraine has now dragged on for more than four months, and Russia is using its firepower to make incremental gains. US intelligence estimates that Russia currently holds about 20% of the country, mostly in eastern Ukraine.  "When will Russia no longer have the ability to continue this fight? When will Putin run out of weapons, run out of funds? Or can this continue for years," Brennan asked Scholz.

No one really knows, Scholz replied, but Putin's lengthy planning suggests he's prepared for a sustained war effort. "He has — he is perhaps the leader of a very great country with a lot of people living there, with a lot of means, and he is really doing this brutal war with — and he prepared for it [for] very long," Scholz said. "I think the decision to- to do this war was taken one year before it started or possibly earlier because he prepared for it. And so, he will be able to continue with the war really a long time."

Let me clarify some things here. 

1. Olaf Scholz cannot be viewed as a good source of expertise on anything related to warfare, real economy and, especially so, in relation to Russia. He simply has zero qualifications, even when one considers his present post as Germany's Chancellor. What he gets are some reports from a few remaining real professionals in BND and Bundeswehr who told him, I am sure, from the get go, about REAL situation. As the unlucky fate of some Germany's top brass testifies, such as Admiral Shonbach's forced resignation, Scholz was getting more or less reliable forecasting from the very start of SMO. But...

2. Western "elites" are simply incapable to hear "bad news" on anything because most of them are petulant children with the maturity level of high schools teenagers. Enough to take a look at the "levels" of the US State Department or other people from Biden Admin who pretend to run the country. As the result of all that, once the stream of, mostly fake, "news" (a euphemism for propaganda) from Ukraine dried up, reality, including the most important one--on operational and strategic level--began to bite. It hurts, I know. 

But recall, that from the inception I warned about a complete delusion about Russia exercised in the West even by people who are supposed to know. Even deeply respected by me as a true, who he is undoubtedly, military professional and, most importantly, thinker is not free from some obvious misconceptions about Russia. Such as Early Warning ABM capabilities. But combined West miscalculated in the most important aspect of Russia--her massive real economic capability which, in turn, drives Russia's huge mobilization, both economic and military, potential. Only now this "message" begins to trickle UP in both Europe and even Washington D.C. I warned about the dangers of this miscalculations since the very inception of this blog and, of course, in here:

It is worth mentioning, that ANY, I repeat it, any intelligence or military institution in the West is not up to the task of understanding Russia's mobilization potential, which the last 4 months demonstrated perfectly. The FUBAR with delusional thinking regarding West's weapons' deliveries to Ukraine and fantastical thinking of civilian leadership of the West combined with crude and unprofessional propaganda from the US military "experts" demonstrate perfectly how incompetent they are. In the end, I warned, that using the framework of Western "economism" in application to Russia is an exercise in futility, because the same framework doesn't work on West's economy at large either. 

Beaten to death cliche ascribed to many people ranging from Churchill to Metternich that "Russia is never as strong as she looks; Russia is never as weak as she looks" is just that--a cliche. In reality, it is just that the West was never really good at understanding of military and economic potential translating into the kinetic action. Let's face it--ALL, without exception, people in the decision making circles in the US know little about the world outside and especially so about Russia--it is a systemic illness of the US body politic as a whole and it is extremely dangerous. I will repeat, again, Russia study field in the combined West and, especially in the US is an academic fraud, populated by pseudo-"academic" shysters with soft Ph.Ds and Russia "expert" community is laughable because of its sheer incompetence, based in low intellectual level. 

But, if even Olaf Scholz begins to if not see (I doubt he is that smart) to, at least, articulate some realities which really matter, then it shows a very carefully hidden from the brainwashed Western public, some major tectonic shifts at least in Europe. Europeans, I know some, are waking up to the reality that the US, namely its neocon mafia in charge of the US foreign policy, would like to see Europe burn in continental war against Russia, while the US will seat it out and then, as in WW II, will come in to claim its spoils. Neocons are one trick ponies and utterly militarily incompetent people, but even such a door mat and America's slap bitch as Scholz begins to recognize that it may end really bad for him personally (that's the main concern) and for the country which he and his government so passionately want to finish off as a nation. So, something is afoot and Scholz suddenly beginning to speak as a man who finally had his two-hour briefing on introductory level geopolitics--you know, geography, industries, military and shit like that--is a good indicator of this. So, in this case, it is a positive development. 

In related news, a neocon rag laments: 

Ukraine’s forces have received less training over the recent weeks, which impacts their capacity to operate some advanced weapons systems, magazine Foreign Policy (FP) reported on Friday, citing sources. Since the launch of Russia's military offensive in the neighboring country in late February, Ukraine has been constantly asking its Western partners to provide them with more heavy weapons and to do so as quickly as possible. However, as a senior US defense official told FP, “the drumbeat of faster, faster, faster” does not always work well because “the Ukrainians needed to have the training to be able to effectively use these systems.” Meanwhile, the Ukrainian officials cited by the FP, complained on the one hand about the “too slow” pace of Western aid but, on the other hand, admitted that “beyond training for the HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) and Western artillery, military training for their troops has dipped in recent weeks, leaving them unable to operate more advanced systems.”

Well, no shit geniuses. Main explanation (among few others) is the fact that VSU losses are catastrophic and most capable and smartest have been simply killed. It is a Volkssturm phase for 404, and it is accelerating as I type this. But you see, if those who matter would have been learning in their respective programs something of value and really tried, they wouldn't have to deal with this severe cognitive dissonance and they would have chosen a much more constructive and realistic approach to Russia and we all wouldn't be witnessing what we witness today, not to mention listening (reading) to old fool Kissinger's definitions of victory or loss for Russia. How this artifact is still around and is taken seriously by anyone is a complete mystery to me, but then again--at this stage the West needs to "arrange" face saving measures and not get involved with nuclear exchange with Russia as many neocons want.

You See, I Told You So)))

Well, didn't I dedicate my whole writing career to this moment trying to explain to the people in D.C. that they know shit about Russia and they better take my advice and, following Bismarck's advice, make "a good treaty with Russia"? 

The Kremlin said on Thursday that claims of President Vladimir Putin being misled by his own military only prove how little the US really knows about Russia. The response came after the White House and the Pentagon suggested that officials were afraid to speak the truth to Putin about the performance of the Russian Army in Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters he was dismayed by claims that advisers have misled the president. “As it turns out, neither the State Department nor the Pentagon have the real information of what is going on in the Kremlin. They simply don’t understand President Putin, don’t understand the decision-making mechanism, and don’t understand the work we do,” he said.

I agree, they don't, they never did--99% of the US Russia "experts" are frauds in academic and human terms who sell nice-sounding BS to very provincial and uncultured US "elites" to reinforce those elites' sense of self-importance. This is happening since WW II and never ceased, but then again, I said and wrote it so many times that there is no need to repeat myself. Get the fvcking real professional experts and fire most US "Russia" academe, maybe after that you will get some positive thing going, like normal relations.

P.S. I am not for hire, if anyone thinks about my ulterior motives.

Carl Sagan Verbatim...

Via Tony Heller's channel. Sagan is prescient here and it applies in the broadest sense to our reality today:

We have semi-literate mentally impaired girl and a guy who failed his basic math classes in middle-school (Al Gore) pontificating on "climate change". I omit here this clown from Korea who thinks that social "sciences" are the most important sciences. We have lawyers and political "scientists" telling us what war is and how to fight it; and this insanity goes on and on, and on because... ? Right, science is difficult, very difficult--politics is easy and it gets a hold of the science and here we are. Ask Europeans, they know it better than anyone else.

No, Daniel Larison, You Are Wrong Here.

I am talking about Daniel Larison trying to figure out what really drives Trump-Bolton relations. Larison explains US getting into the regional wars' trap this way:

For someone “not playing along,” Trump has obediently given Bolton and the Iran hawks practically everything they have wanted so far. He has gone much further in laying the groundwork for war with Iran than any of his predecessors, and the only reason that many people seem confident that he won’t order an attack is their mistaken belief that he is a non-interventionist when all of the evidence tells us that he is no such thing. Trump presumably doesn’t want to start a multi-year, extremely expensive war that could also throw the economy into a recession, but then every president that launches an illegal war of choice assumes that the war would be much easier and take less time than it does. No one ever knowingly opts for a bloody debacle. The absurdly optimistic hawkish expectations of a quick and easy triumph are always dashed on the rocks of reality, but for some reason political leaders believe these expectations every time because “this time it’s different.” There will come a point where Bolton will tell Trump that attacking Iran (or Venezuela) is the only way to “win,” and Trump will probably listen to him just as he has listened to him on all of these issues up until now.

I disagree--see highlighted in yellow. Larison must ask himself a question--when was the last time POTUS was a man with serious military or intelligence background, not to speak of his national security team? Even when one discounts baneful corrupt influence of Israel and Gulfies' on the US foreign policy, how about we face the fact that in the last 27 years we have one non-stop reshuffling of the lawyers, entrepreneurs, media figures and political pseudo-scientists at the American political top and national security apparatus. Being former Attorney General or a journo does not qualify one for expressing competent opinions on the issues of real warfare or serious intelligence matters. US political top and decision makers are utterly ignorant and uneducated in these matters as are in actual practical geopolitics once one considers a disastrously pathetic level of geopolitical thought in the US in the last 30 years--no wonder, it was written by people who saw explosions on TV screen only. In other words, most people in US elites from POTUS position down lack every single quality imperative for running such a country as the United States or any other superpower. These are the real, not "some", reasons for "absurdly optimistic hawkish expectations"--ignorance. There is absolutely no mystery about it by anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of what real war is.

I know, it is a painful realization, but that is what one gets when electing a kindergarten to run a nation, which has NO real life experience with war and is absolutely confused by a real state of the affairs inside and outside its borders. I know, it is insulting to recognize that all those allegedly high IQ people in legislature, media and executive are not very bright and are not fit to offer any opinions on any issues related to real national security. This also explains not just forced but truly admired by many in US  Israel's military "accomplishments"--it is easy to BS the Sect of Desert Storm Witnesses. But in the end, one has to ask this simple question--how all those, primarily humanities and social studies "educated", people constituting US political class can possibly think other than "this time is different"? They can not--they simply lack appropriate instruments, a cognitive apparatus, which require many years of study, practice, including in operational zones, and study again, especially when it goes for operational and strategic planning level. Without these instruments everything related to warfare in US is reduced to doctrine-mongering and ROI, and Hollywood. Real war? Forget it, after all these will be those deplorables who will be sent to die in some God-forsaken locality, while serving as mass murder instruments of an Empire which has no clue. 

I am forced to use words of Russian intelligence professional Andrei Bezrukov:

What is THEIR weakness? As enemies these guys are mediocrities, second rate. They overate. Their previous generation was stronger. They respected us, we respected them. We don't respect these ones,they didn't deserve it. They can bully, as for the real fight--we'll see about that... They are enraged that soon they will have to live within their means.They forgot how to do so long time ago. That is why they want to solve a problem with us now, while others are still afraid of them. 

I can only clarify Bezrukov--mediocrity is too noble a term to describe those who run this pathetic (and dangerous) spectacle. I wonder if Daniel Larison understands this.