Ilya Kramnik...

... is no "military expert". He never was. Graduating Moscow State University with law degree and then "transitioning" to "journalism" and studying warfare (in Russian), LOL, he, nevertheless, managed to insert himself, the same as recently fired director of the Institute of the USA and Canada, into the peacetime media "military expert" cabal. RT, whose only real military expert who writes for them in English is Scott Ritter, decided to inquire Mr. Kramnik about SMO. In the piece filled with platitudes and conjectures he makes, however, one fascinating conclusion. Exactly the kind one would expect from Moscow's humanities dumbed down Beau Monde, who, having zero military background, such as Karaganov, among many others, and having no clue about the subject of their "study" (combined West), still continue to wax "strategic". 

Here is what Kramnik states:

NATO could have avoided this situation by increasing the production of weapons and military equipment back in 2022, and deploying additional production facilities. In this case, some progress would already have been visible by the winter of 2023-24. However, the bloc did not have a unified vision regarding additional weapons production, which severely complicated the decision-making process. Not a single NATO politician was ready to guarantee arms manufacturing companies a steady, large-scale demand for weapons once the conflict in Ukraine ended. Moreover, even though the scale of the conflict is significant, it is in some cases insufficient to ensure the necessary demand for new weapons. Finally, it should be noted that a number of Western politicians and military leaders believed that the current military aid to Ukraine would suffice to meet the goals of 2023 – obviously, this was due to false conclusions made as a result of the battles in the Kharkov and Kherson regions in the summer-fall of 2022. 

Kramnik, as any Moscow "expert" who never worked a day worth in actual serious professional capacity, let alone served as cadre officer, and has zero STEM and serious industry background, continues to exercise a delusion that combined West could have, should the political guarantees have been extended to military-industrial complex, somehow ramped up weapons production and delivery to VSU. That exposes Kramnik as nothing more than a shyster who, while working for the section of the study of the US in the Institute of the Economic Relations and International Relations, didn't study modern US and especially its industrial capacity, or, rather lack thereof, and has absolutely no concept of how utterly corrupt and impotent Pentagon's procurement policies have been failing for decades preceding SMO. 

Generally, when I read all kinds of Russian "experts" RT loves to publish on matters of geopolitics, waxing all "strategic" and "doctrinal" and using such big words as "unified vision", I am forced to repeat what I am writing for years now--you do not have serious STEM background, military academic background and military-intel serious professional experience on the level of brigade staff office or CO of the company and larger--you cannot be taken seriously. And even that, as is being demonstrated by the bulk of US and UK generals, is not a guarantee from being stupid. And then there is this teeny-weeny factor of clearance, which for people like Kramnik or Valdai boys, quoting my friend colonel Volodya Trukhan (you can hear it at Vera's, Volodya and my podcast only on VK) is defined as "get the fuck out of here clearance". So, if Kramnik doesn't understand fundamental issues of CINC (Composite Index of National Capability), or never internalized what Jeffrey Barnett prophetically defined in Parameters as 14 keys to power in early 1990s, I don't know how to help people like Kramnik. 

Kramnik, unlike me, with my rich experience of working in US commercial aerospace, also has no idea about criticality which accumulated in whatever is left in American industries, especially in terms of R&D and labor force, and, of course, he would have difficulty comprehending purely operational issue presented on a professional level--a precise level which is occupied by military professionals who calculate and plan a lot, and this cannot be "studied" without having prerequisites I listed above, namely professional military-intel background. And here we go again, RT provides the tribune to all kinds of Russian "experts" none of who, surprise, surprise, has any clue what they are talking about, OR, when such "experts" as Colonel Khodaryonok, who wouldn't find his ass with both hands in a brightly lit room as far as practical geopolitics is concerned, live by generating platitudes which, most of the time, contain no meaningful information.  

And so it goes on, and on, and on, and when I talk to my friends in Russia, the answer to the question of why my books will not be translated and published in Russia, the answer is simple--a large portion of Russian media Americanists and "military experts" should be then thrown out of work as shysters and BSers. Many of them are. Sadly, I cannot post here the link to Solovyov's video a couple of days ago when this creature suddenly... assaulted all those "military bloggers" and voenkors he himself... promoted so actively. Well, times are changing, aren't they. Everybody wants to be at the filled to the brink trough and fat media tit of Russian State, but it is too late for them--they discredited themselves in the most dramatic manner. And that is the "unified vision" Kramnik better acquaints himself with, before writing anything on issues he has zero understanding. The time of real professionals has come.

Fifteen Years Ago...

... on this date: 080808.  

The date Russia has made first statement about her arriving back from the near death. I recall all those "military experts", especially a bunch of shysters from Russia, promising that Russians will be defeated because US "trained" Georgian Army. US learned absolutely nothing since then. We all know thee result of that 5-day war. US "trained" Army disintegrated when faced with real combined arms. 

This is the type of human trash the US views as its "allies". 

But today something begins to trickle down even into the sewer of American media and clueless politicos:

Read my lips, you also may quote me on that: there is NO understanding of modern war in the US across the board, including most of American military. There is also NO serious strategist in the US who has a clear view of the formation of balance of power and how serious militaries write their doctrines. That is why I see sincere attempts by Daniel Larison to challenge one of the leading American "strategists" as misplaced and having all signs of the Sisyphus Labor.

Walter Russell Mead sells a pack of lies:

President Barack Obama was the Great Denialist in geopolitics, temporizing and tap dancing, appeasing and apologizing as an axis of anti-American revisionist powers consisting of China, Russia, Iran and their satellites stepped up their resistance and began to coordinate policies.

If anyone is being a revisionist here, it’s Mead with his wildly distorted description of Obama’s foreign policy record. Obama got many things wrong as president from Libya to Yemen, but the idea that he spent his eight years “appeasing and apologizing” while an “axis” of revisionists emerged is nothing but lazy propaganda from a bad analyst. The old lie of Obama’s imaginary “apology tour” is still with us almost fifteen years later, and it is even more ridiculous now than it was then. 

The US has only a handful of people, who also are the exception to the rule of a wholesale sheer military illiteracy, who are capable of speaking on and understanding how actual strategy is developed and implemented. Walter Russel Mead is not one of them. 99% of America's "strategists" are people with NO systemic military education, knowledge of history and the only skill those people have as the result of their "degrees" in the so called "strategic studies" from Ivy League humanities degree mills is juxtaposing of carefully selected facts. Walter Russel Mead has degree in English Literature from Yale and never served a day in any military or intel capacity. So, the fact that he teaches Clausewitz and Sun Tzu's one-liners in the times of neural networks, space-based ISR and hyper-sonic weapons whose physics and math he cannot possibly understand, tells you everything you need to know about America's "Strategy" academe. It also explains why those are incapable of talking in anything but pseudo-strategic platitudes--a euphemism for BS. 

In other words, Mead has zero qualifications for speaking and writing on modern geopolitics and strategy, because to do so one has to have the tool kit of looking at strategy in conjunction with operational level--two levels at which wars are won or lost and which require the depth. And that's the point I make for years--one cannot continue to merely challenge the BS fountaining from the deep recesses of US "academia" and think-tankdom, one has to challenge qualifications, that is to say start operating in the ad hominem mode, when dealing with a cabal of uncultured, unread, illiterate Ph.D shysters who toil for the benefit of America's homicidal foreign policy and military adventurism. Yes, they lie, but many of them sincerely believe those lies. That is why the ONLY American real strategist of true international repute, Alfred Thayer Mahan, was a graduate of the US Naval Academy, has been a cadre naval officer with combat experience all his life, and retired in the rank of Admiral. 

Military degrees and experiences in and of themselves do not guarantee from stupidity and fraud, enough to look at US generals at the so called ISW, or read US "doctrinal" documents, but it is time to finally start calling all those white board "strategists", who wouldn't know how operations are planned or insulate themselves from inconvenient facts of the America's grossly exaggerated military history, for what they are--frauds and shysters who know only pseudo-military verbiage and have no clue about the real history of the last two centuries. And it was on this date fifteen years ago when they have been taught the first lesson in real continental combined arms warfare. 

Or, as quoting Lieutenant-General Klokotov, at the time of the Gulf War the chief of the Strategy Department of Academy of the General Staff (guess from three times if "strategist" Mead and ilk will be even able to pass entrance exams there): 

“I would like to emphasize here that the Persian Gulf war was taken as the standard in studying the strategic nature of possible war. It would appear that this position, adopted in the draft ‘Fundamentals of Russian Military Doctrine,’ is dangerous. The fact is that this war [was] ‘strange’ in all respects [and] cannot serve as a standard.”

On August 8th, 2008 Russian Armed Forces started their healing and return to their proper shape allowing them to fight and defeat  combined NATO forces. The rest is history, but they don't teach it in the US anymore. 

You Have Made Your Bed, Now Sleep In It.

I seldom refer to such media cloaca as WaPo, but here is where I break my own rule:

Tell me who your friends are and I will tell who you are. For those who don't remember: Donald Trump was very enthusiastic to have coward and cuck John Bolton as his National Security Adviser. I think Trump recognized in Bolton his very own other--aggressive chicken-hawk trying to hide his cowardice behind....Well, why don't I repeat myself from the last year:

It has to be understood very clearly that Bolton-Trump and Trump-Pompeo relations are symbiotic ones. If one recalls--Trump made his admiration for Bolton known even before Trump was considered a serious contender for the Oval Office. In the end, he DID hire Bolton. Both Trump and Bolton are frauds as statesmen: Bolton is a Beta-male and a coward who sublimates his complexes in aggressive rhetoric and behavior, this is not to speak of Bolton being an Israeli asset par-excellence.These are precisely the traits Trump recognizes in him because he is one himself. Recall his statement about his, Trump's, "military background" he received in a... boarding school for boys. Recall how Kevin Costner's character in undeservedly chastised The Postman, in the final battle with Will Patton's character, astutely notices how one fraud can recognize the other. This is exactly the situation. Trump is fool, but Bolton is merely an experienced bureaucrat, which testifies to the level of Trump's foolishness and incompetence. I doubt there is any Good Cop-Bad Cop dynamics there.  

Now Trump wants to stop Bolton's memoirs from being released on June 23. Oh, come on Donny, wait till Pompeo gets out (or is removed) of your admin--I am sure another "salvo" of "revelations" will follow to make NYT national best-seller list. Stalin was prescient when uttered his now sacramental: "Cadres decide everything". But then again, we are talking different "weight categories" in terms of intellect and life experiences, with Stalin winning even without getting in the ring for a fight. Trump's cadre "policies" or, rather, lack thereof, are astounding--the number of treasonous (both to him and the country) mediocrities (at best) which he at different times appointed or pushed through as his proteges (like this cuck Gorsuch) is very impressive. From Bolton, to Mattis, to Gorsuch, to Milley, to yet another coward Sessions--the list is telling. It is not only telling in terms of a very shallow pool of America's statesmanship "talent", I am not even sure any exists out there at all, and I am on record about extremely low quality of American "elites" and mechanism which "prepares" them, it is especially telling about Trump's lack of real leadership qualities which manifest themselves primarily in the ability to select both professionals and allies for a job. Trump got none.

Well, the way Trump is consistently absent from defending General Michael Flynn, speaks a lot. And then, of course, there is this little teeny-weeny issue of American "conservatism" which allegedly exists somewhere out there but is somehow obscured and is not allowed to manifest itself by this Conservatism Incorporated (aka Conservatism Inc.). Can we stop this charade, what goes under the title of American Conservatism Inc. IS THE American conservatism. It is a USA, USA, USA Ra-rah, NASCAR, NFL, flag waiving "conservatism" which is as conservative as I am Chinese. There is nothing conservative in American "conservatism" because it is radically Neo-liberal economically and ignorant culturally. As GOP demonstrated in the last couple of weeks it is not a conservative party. It hasn't been in ages. Real conservatism to be a viable ideology requires a nation and here is the problem, the United States never really coalesced into one and if any trend on true nationhood existed at some point of time, it was destroyed completely in the XXI century. Now the destruction is being formalized. And then, of course, there is this yet another teeny-weeny issue of "economy", with all that poison that financial capitalism is being a parasite on the host's body, in Michael Hudson's words, and American "conservatives" do not want to part with one. Fact is--they can't, they just do not know better. 

So, here we are, with Trump trying to stop another shyster's book from being released, and the issue is not just Ukrainegate, which whores from US media want to revive. At issue, I think, is a larger picture of Trump's betrayal of his promises (what's new for America) which were delivered through truly conservative theses written for Trump by his campaign speech-writers. All for naught. Not least through Trump's cowardice, weakness and inability to learn, which the very fact of Bolton's book being published is a powerful testimony to. After all, it is written by a guy:

President Donald Trump praised his new National Security Adviser John Bolton during a meeting alongside senior military leadership and Vice President Mike Pence on Monday, saying that he will be a "fantastic representative" on his team. "He's highly respected by everybody in this room and John, I want to thank you very much," Trump said to Bolton, who served as United Nations ambassador during the George W. Bush administration. "This is going to be a lot of work. Interesting day. He picked today as his first day, so generals, I think he picked the right day, but certainly you're going to find it very exciting because you are going to do a fantastic job and I appreciate you joining us."

I have to steal from James Kunstler: the nation where John Bolton or Lindsey Graham are considered "conservative", and the POTUS is paraded as a weakling not capable to surround himself with even remotely competent and dedicated people, and where the main tool of governing is Twitter account, such nation deserves fully a title of Clusterfuck nation. As for Trump, as they say: You Have Made Your Bed, Now Sleep In It.