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.    

Two Can Play The Game.

It is a really news-worthy Monday. Now US accuses Russia of supplying Taliban with weapons again. Of course, no evidence (it is normal now in US) of such activity was provided. 

At a news conference with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis at his side, Gen. John Nicholson, the American commander in Afghanistan, wouldn't provide specifics about Russia's role in Afghanistan. But said he would "not refute" that Moscow's involvement includes giving weapons to the Taliban.

I already wrote about this nonsense here. But Mattis response was pure gold:

"We'll engage with Russia diplomatically," Mattis said. "We'll do so where we can, but we're going to have to confront Russia where what they're doing is contrary to international law or denying the sovereignty of other countries." 

It all begins to look and sound like bad joke or... a descent into a complete madness. But if one to follow the logic (or lack thereof) of this whole panopticon one may recall what General Gromov and Dmitry Rogozin wanted from US in 2010:

 A “successful end” to the operation in Afghanistan will not come simply with the death of Osama bin Laden. The minimum that we require from NATO is consolidating a stable political regime in the country and preventing Talibanization of the entire region.  

I have some news for Mattis: US lost the war in Afghanistan (but he knows it, he is a smart man) and the US will not do anything anymore other than provide some support for current Kabul government on the battlefield which increasingly begins to be dominated by Taliban. The task of stabilizing the region will fall largely to Russia and Russia doesn't give a crap about "human rights" and "democracy" in Afghanistan. Not any more. If it will take a grim dictator and fundamentalist to tame Afghan violence and drugs--so be it. But if Russia would have really supplied Taliban with weapons I can guarantee that the "evidence" (same level of "reliability" as evidence of Russia tampering with US elections) would have been presented long ago and the operational situation in Afghanistan would have been much much worse than it is today.  

Nothing lasts forever and we observe today how US global military-political power fades--it is an objective process and the only things which can be done about it is to:

1. Arrest it or slow it down;
2. Provide for more or less "soft" landing, which means avoiding global conflict.   

United States is faced with the necessity to leave Afghanistan now, US resources turned out to be finite--a 20 trillion dollar debt is a dramatic testament to this. Trump Administration already now is faced with hugely difficult choices which it has to make in order to avoid a global conflict and with it the end of the United States. After the tragedy of 9/11 the United States received an unprecedented political capital and mandate, she also received an enormous sympathy and support. She squandered this capital and now has to live with the consequences. In the end, it was not Russian idea to arm mujaheddin and let the genie out of the bottle. One reaps what he sows. 
     

"Freedom-fighters"

P.S. Taliban is identified in Russia's law as a "terrorist organization". The only contacts Russia has with Taliban are related either to the terms of surrender (changing sides) or to warnings about not doing completely stupid things.    
 

Samantha Power Really Needs A Vacation Or (Better Yet) Permanent Retirement.

When one will write the real history of  the 20th and early 21st century, as long as this person would maintain even rudimentary scholarship and objectivity, one will have to stress one of the major history's truisms--scale and proportions matter a great deal. In fact, they define how history unfolds. In this respect, US Ambassador  to UN Samantha Power is a great demonstrator of a major reason (one of several) for why the United States found herself in the position it is today. This is not a good position, to put it mildly. In her last (yesterday) press-conference in UN Security Council, during her incoherent babbling about Russia, Power repeated the old and fundamental myth of American politics of the last 70 years. 

 

THE COMMON THREAD CAN BE FOUND ONLY IN WHAT RUSSIA IS AGAINST, NOT IN THE RULES IT FOLLOWS. BUT THE RULES IT BREAKS. RUSSIA'S ACTIONS ARE NOT STANDING UP A NEW WORLD ORDER. THEY ARE TEARING WORLD -- THAT THEY ARE TEARING DOWN THE ONE THAT EXISTS. THIS IS WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING AGAINST. HAVING DEFEATED THE FORCES OF FASCISM AND COMMUNISM, WE NOW CONFRONT THE FORCES OF AUTHORITARIANISM AND NIHILISM. 

And here is the issue: each time I hear, from many corners, that United States "defeated" "communism" (remember this? "You lost, we won") or, let alone, that US defeated Nazism (Fascism, etc.), I am forced to ask a question. The question is: have anyone in US political class ever tried to claim credit for Sunrises (and Sunsets) or for change in the seasons, you know--to issue a medal "For Changing Summer Into Autumn"? Each time when I hear that somebody "defeated Soviet Union", I try to recall desperately when was the parade of "victors" held on the Red Square? The degree of idiocy of the US elites' post-Cold War triumphalism is astonishing. It is especially noticeable against the background of contemporary Russia trying to stem the flow of all those "liberated" nations into Russia, and here we are talking about millions upon millions people. So much for the "liberty". What is also strange about those claims is that the ability of Russian Federation to annihilate most of the world on the eve of dissolution of USSR didn't change after its dissolution. Obviously, the fact that multicultural empires do not live long, and that is how (primarily) Soviet Union collapsed, is beyond the grasp of people like Power and US political and "intellectual" strata she is the product of. Yes, US did "help" somewhat but metaphysical and material rot of the so called "communism" had very little to do with the United States, whose, accidental material wealth of the second half of 20th Century was based primarily on the outcome of WW II in which the Soviet/Russian contribution to victory in it against Nazism, Fascism, what have you, is overwhelming, both in blood and treasure. 

Yes, Power gets to it too in her press-conference and does this, now traditional, lip service to Russian sacrifice, but denying Russian people any agency is a traditional pseudo-intellectual shtick of US "elites" who are desperate for any kind of meaningful "victory". Well, here is the opinion of the man who was and is close to Russia's political top and he, actually, knows Russia inside-out.

     

The statement of Cold War "victory" flies out of the window once one gets closer to real Soviet History of 1970s and 1980s and understanding of what country that was--the insights neither CIA (yeah, right) nor Soviet "dissidents" (most of them discredited) could and can provide. Russians didn't "surrender" in Cold War, they, as it turned out today, naively thought that the better way was possible and extended "hand of friendship to US. This hand has been slapped away".  Or, putting it in layman's lingo, Russians got screwed over and those who BSed naive Russians proclaimed themselves "victors". Now, former influential Congressman Curt Weldon exclaims in desperation: how did we get here, meaning disastrous relations with Russia. Obviously Weldon conveniently "forgets" how NATO moved to Russia's borders (because US was a Cold War "victor") and how American advisers and firms did their utmost to place an alcoholic and West's door mat Yeltsin into Kremlin (all on Weldon's Congressional "watch"). 
      

US "hacking" Russia's elections in 1996. 

Yeah, Russians, certainly, must exhibit a very warm feelings towards US "diplomacy" whose only task was and is to lecture Russians on how to do things right, that is how the US defined "right". That is what Power and US "elites" (most of them) represent. It doesn't matter that their triumphalism and false sense of entitlement have no foundation in real life, and those few years in 1990s of controlling Russia's "elites", who would sell their own mother for the grant from US NGOs and would follow just about any insane policy "advice" from their American curators were the acts of high treason towards Russian people. As long as United States was able to re-write the history, it was all good. 

American post-Cold War triumphalism is a love child of American exceptionalism which is one of the pillars of American founding. This exceptionalism is not unique, Russians themselves had this "exceptional" thing going for them for a century or three, so had British with their empire "on which the Sun never sets". So were Germans, we all know where this led to. All great nations, and American are a great nation, have this exceptional streak. But American messianic exceptionalism really overdid it, big time. It was a very specific way it overdid it. As Alexis De Tocqueville wrote in his masterpiece "Democracy In America" (Chapter 16): All free nations are vainglorious, but national pride is not displayed by all in the same manner. The Americans in their intercourse with strangers appear impatient of the smallest censure and insatiable of praise. The most slender eulogium is acceptable to them; the most exalted seldom contents them; they unceasingly harass you to extort praise, and if you resist their entreaties they fall to praising themselves. It would seem as if, doubting their own merit, they wished to have it constantly exhibited before their eyes. Their vanity is not only greedy, but restless and jealous; it will grant nothing, whilst it demands everything, but is ready to beg and to quarrel at the same time. If I say to an American that the country he lives in is a fine one, “Ay,” he replies, “there is not its fellow in the world.” If I applaud the freedom which its inhabitants enjoy, he answers, “Freedom is a fine thing, but few nations are worthy to enjoy it.” If I remark the purity of morals which distinguishes the United States, “I can imagine,” says he, “that a stranger, who has been struck by the corruption of all other nations, is astonished at the difference.” At length I leave him to the contemplation of himself; but he returns to the charge, and does not desist till he has got me to repeat all I had just been saying. It is impossible to conceive a more troublesome or more garrulous patriotism; it wearies even those who are disposed to respect it (c). 

Most of American "elites" live by this rule, it is the thing which makes them tick, it is their clockwork, and with the events of the 20th Century the vanity of American exceptionalism reached a feverish pitch. So much so, that American "elite" started to directly steal and deform history. One of manifestations of such a global brainwashing is the fact that most West Europeans today believe that it was the United States which won WW II. The results of such a mythology are an unmitigated disaster, whose embodiment Samantha Power is--arrogant, badly educated, boastful and completely detached from the reality. She is also a fanatic Russophobe. I specifically emphasize here American "elites", those hordes of humanities "educated" offsprings of American coastal well-off class and of Ivy League degree mills. I know American people, met thousands of them and have a deep love and respect to those folks but very many (not all) representatives of the American "intellectual" class is another matter altogether. But it is this "intellectual" and moneyed class who writes the history books and owns media. And the march of American exceptionalism and triumphalism seemed unstoppable by late 1990s. That is for those who didn't know the history. Things changed dramatically in the last 3-4 years and those, yet again, who knew the history and had background could see this change coming afar, I anticipated this, hence this blog. That is those who were not American "intellectual" class--a distinction which needs to be worn with pride today. A Departure of Samantha Power, who is an embarrassment to the highly regarded  profession of a diplomat coincided with the wholesale epiphanies by this very American "intellectual" class, that one can lie only for so long, eventually the truth will emerge through empirical evidence. 

I wrote about Harlan Ullman's partial sobering--it is partial since he continues to repeat the idiocy about Russia "invading" Ukraine, as an example. Good luck building your conclusions and argumentation on the sand, yet again. Then Professor of Strategy from  Naval War College Nicholas Gvozdev got the ball rolling and yesterday he continued with his, finally dawning realization that this very "intellectual" elite pretty much knows nothing about Russia. He offers to rethink American "assumptions" on Russia. No, Mr. Gvozdev "rethinking" assumptions which were a result of a failed American "scholarship", shoddy, if not mostly fraudulent, Russia's "academe" and, in the end, falling into the trap of own, extremely false and arrogant narrative, is not possible at this time. Gvozdev, after making a hodgepodge and very weak argument, calls for: at the end of the day, however, whatever position on Russia wins out should be rooted in analytically rigorous and dispassionate analysis (c). 

I have some news for Nicholas Gvozdev: a "dispassionate" analysis is impossible at this time in the United States because very many of those "analysts" either comprehend or feel that once the "dispassionate" analysis starts, one has to completely throw American exceptionalist and triumphalist mythology out of the window. It kills American messianic narrative and brings to the fore the issue of scales and proportions--the factor which American Samantha "Powers" want desperately to ignore for a simple reason, they know, even if by gut feeling only, they will come out losers.  Hence Russophobia. The United States needs a complete overhaul of its corrupt "academe" and revival of a real Russian Studies field, which would be led not by some insane neocon (Pipes) or irrational Russophobe such as Brzezinski, let alone clownish hack such as Macfaul--the damage they did to Russian-American relations and scholaship is vast--but with people who actually bothered to study and understand the subject of their interest. In the end, as even yesterday's piece by Gvozdev shows, without understanding Russian culture, which is immense, and Russian warfare, both of which are two sides of the same coin, any attempt to "study" Russia in the way she was "studied" for the last 70+ years will end up precisely where they ended up today for the United States--on the brink of war with the nation which will not "stand for the cost" when it fights on its own land. Mr. Gvozdev better start his "cost" analysis with studying a real history of WW II. This is a good primer.
              

As Father Robert Tobias wrote in his remarkable "Heaven On Earth, A Lutheran-Orthodox Odyssey": When of late in this (American) culture we turned our eyes to divine epiphanies, we perceived only two-dimensionality, not great depth. Perhaps that was provisionally inevitable in a culture dominated by two-dimensional television, movies, billboards, cameras and sports events. (c)  I have a suggestion for those who really want to perceive a real depth--start with dispassionate study of the Soviet WW II and after history, and not just of GULAG. But most importantly--in this century of global communications and travel, go to Russia, and not Moscow or St.Petersburg only, go talk to Russian people, especially those who are in their 40s and 50s (they run the country) and see for yourself why Russia seeks peace, not war and why, after 1000+ years of her history, she will never again fight on her own land. Have a epiphany.