Oh No! Not Again.

Putin "didn't figure out the plan", this "plan" was in force since 1945 and the guy who figured it out was Stalin. Fact is, he knew it already in 1939. West eager to finish Russia as a great power – John Mearsheimer. 

The US political scientist argues that President Putin has figured out the plan and has every reason not to trust Western leaders. 

The only difference have been 1980s and 1990s when USSR took the path (originally formalized in 1975 in Helsinki but conceived in 1960s) of "peaceful coexistence" between the West and USSR, which resulted in dissolution of said USSR, collapse of the socialist system and participation of Yeltsin's criminal gang in destruction of Russia. 

Mearsheimer really needs to update himself on WW II and how and by who Nazism has been crushed and why today Stalin is increasingly venerated in Russia because population at large can see how right he was viewing the West as an existential enemy of historic Russia. All this, mind you, despite incessant anti-Soviet and anti-Stalin propaganda in Russian media and among the so called "creative class". Putin is a product of the system which KNEW always what the combined West was up to and even before Putin's "arrival", Russia understood what was transpiring--hence Primakov's Doctrine, a radically anti-Western geopolitical vision which has been realized now. 

Dreams In the End of Summer.

Not that it is not expected, it is fully expected. 

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer called on Sunday for the EU to impose a cap on power prices and decouple electricity charges from the price of gas. The Austrian leader said failure to do so would let Russian President Vladimir Putin “determine the European electricity price.” "We must finally stop the madness that is taking place in energy markets. And that can only happen through a European solution,” read a statement from Nehammer’s office. “Something has to happen at last. This market will not regulate itself in its current form. I call on all the EU 27 to stand together to stop this price explosion immediately.”

I have news for Nehammer--there cannot be "European Solution" to anything, because Europe, with some few exceptions, is not a subject of modern geopolitics. We can discuss reasons for this state of the affairs in Europe until hell freezes over, but I am on record for years that EU is America's lunch, period. This is not to say that this will extend America's lifespan greatly, but that was the plan from the git go. I think EU leaders should concentrate on believing Ze's promises and act accordingly:

President Vladimir Zelensky said in his daily evening address on Sunday that Ukraine will recapture Donbass, which is now almost fully seized by Russian forces. “We have not forgotten and will not forget any of our cities and any of our people,” he said. “Now Donbass is almost destroyed by Russian strikes, devastated. The proud and glorious Ukrainian Donetsk was humiliated by the Russian occupation and robbed. But Ukraine will return. For sure. Life will return. The dignity of the people of Donbass will return. The ability to live will return. The opportunity to live safely and happily,” Zelensky added. According to him, this is what the Ukrainian flag will symbolize “when we set it up in Donetsk, Gorlovka, Mariupol, in all cities of Donbass, Azov area, in all areas under Russian occupation – in Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Kherson regions. And definitely in Crimea.” “Ukraine remembers everything,” he concluded.

No? Doesn't work anymore? Who would have thought? I think EU should also support Kiev's space exploration ambitions and its Artificial Intellect research (I kid, I kid, none exists in 404) because present intellect of EU in particular, and West in general, can be easily substituted with 8 bit Atari program and it will still do better. Which, speaking about such sewer as The National Interest rag, get a load of that--an "analysis" from a typical BSer in polit-sci who laments a tsunami of pseudo-military crap which dominates US SMO narrative from the git go, which demonstrates utter incompetence of Pentagon and US "intel", but this guy, obviously, has issues with reality of modern warfare (hint: 99% of people in D.C. and Arlington have) and he cries out:

Take, for instance, the purported certainty in the West that Russia’s military sought to conquer a heavily populated and fervently nationalistic country nearly the size of Texas—and initially, intended to do so in a matter of days, no less. This belief is entirely baseless. In fact, even the U.S. military is incapable of pulling off such a feat in that little time. And yet, the falsehood, which formed the West’s perception of Russia’s intentions, remains unabated. So too is Washington’s incessant deflection of holding any responsibility for provoking the invasion, despite its ubiquitous and escalatory involvement in the precipitating crisis.

Seriously? I have news for this "scholar of warfare", the United States never conducted anything close to the likes of SMO, against the actual standing army of 600,000 while having a force three times smaller and judging by "even the US military" triumphs in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, with a short break for turkey shoot against backward Saddam's Army and the performance of the US military technology in the REAL war environment in a complex terrain, which is dismal, this use of copium is rather silly. The fact that the US hasn't won any serious military campaign since Korea is, obviously, not a fact known to the author, which is not surprising for the US "geopolitical" rag which still publishes this shit:

U.S. Javelins Are Stopping Russia’s Armored Advance in Ukraine.

Yes, the US "expert" community today is nothing more than a collection of parasites who lack understanding of the subject matter, but if it is forgivable to such clown as Kris Osborne, when US generals continue to humiliate themselves publicly by spewing amateurish pseudo-military BS, it is a whole other matter. The depth of ignorance is such, that, as it became known, those people in Pentagon and "intel" thought that Russian Army would use... chemical weapons in SMO. They believed it. It is a systemic institutional failure, which cannot be addressed without redesign of the whole system. 

Russian troops in Ukraine are “exhausted” and may “crack” before the year is out, according to a retired US army general. Ben Hodges, who served in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, disagreed with predictions that the conflict could extend into drawn-out war of attrition.

Do I need to explain now why the US cannot fight a real war? With military leaders like that, who needs enemies. But then again, Hodges doesn't know what real war is, they don't teach this anymore in US military academies. How could they--that means a de facto admitting being a loser. I will expand on military education in the West later. Ben Hodges is one such "example".

Excellent Piece By Larry.

Larry asks important question:

Let me start with a simple analogy. You are tooling down the road on a BMW S1000RR “crotch rocket” at 100 miles per hour. You see Toyota sedan a couple of hundred yards (i.e., 183 meters) ahead with an elderly codger at the helm getting ready to pull out into traffic. Do you think it matters if he sees you? Damn right it does. If he pulls out in front of you a collision is inevitable unless you dump the bike, which means you will skip along the pavement like flat rock flung over a still body of water. Or, you’ll hit the car and be launched into low orbit and wind up as bloody pulp. Neither is pleasant to contemplate. It would be nice to know what he is thinking, right? So do you think it matters if the United States correctly understands what the leaders of Russia and China are thinking? And, conversely, does it matter if the leaders of Russia and China correctly discern the intentions of U.S. leaders? The answer–YES on both counts.

Read this excellent piece at Larry's blog. It is this ever important issue of situational (I know where my enemy is) and tactical (I know what my enemy is going to do) awareness which is applicable not just to war but to human activity as a whole. That is why also intelligence craft exists from good ol' human spies to space-based ISR assets. 

It goes without saying that the United States lacks understanding of her "enemies" completely. And it is dangerous, as Larry concludes:

We face a comparable dilemma in the breakdown of communication between Washington and Beijing. False assumptions reinforced by wrong conclusions almost inevitably lead to a deadly miscalculation. Normally, the national intelligence agencies of a nation are supposed to provide a dose of truth and reality. That is the real danger facing America now. The CIA and the FBI are politically compromised and are institutionally averse to telling the President and his team they are wrong. While I no longer have access to current U.S. intelligence, I still hear things through the grapevine of former colleagues and the news is unsettling. There was a time when there were “Dutch Uncles” in the CIA. A “Dutch Uncle” is one who admonishes sternly and bluntly for the benefit of the recipient. Instead of a Dutch Uncle, the intelligence community is behaving more like Wormtongue, a rogue villain in Lord of the Rings. A dangerous situation when our leaders need to understand correctly what the other “guys” think.

Should have the United States known what they were dealing with in terms of Russia in 2014, there would have been a higher probability of this Ukrainian clusterfuck being avoided. But they seem to never learn, and now, they face a complete military and political disaster and a crashing defeat of their "plans", which have been nothing more than practical "sublimation" of the delusions, ignorance and incompetence of people who conceived them. As Mark Chapman, in one of the most hilarious hyperbole I read in years, noted when talking about a particular BSer, who do populate plans-making circles in the West:

The foregoing considered, it will not surprise you, then, that I would be as likely to eat soup made from boiling turnips and Boris Johnson’s bicycle seat as I would be to pay attention to further gobbling from Lucasville.

That's the only way of dealing with people, who, as Larry puts it, do not get that: It Is Critical to Understand What the Other “guy” Thinks.