No, Really.

Who needs these meaningless statements on being against everything bad, and for everything good? But this is precisely the feeling one gets when observing France's yet another diplomatic "maneuver" of trying to insert herself (obviously, on Macron's initiative) as intermediary between combined West and Russia. As TASS reports:

MOSCOW, September 9. /TASS/. Russia and France should think about ways to bolster strategic security in the region, French Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly said on Monday. "The second aim is to think through how we can make a lasting contribution to improve strategic stability. Discussions on the history of the last 20 years should not be centered around finger-pointing, we need to move forward," she said following a 2+2 meeting between the two countries’ defense and foreign ministers. According to her, dialogue will help to "reconsider the basis" of the relations. The minister is convinced that it will also help to avert incidents and alleviate frictions. Parly is certain that mistrust can be eliminated only through better understanding of each other. This is "not always easy because we often have different visions and methods," she pointed out.

Blah blah blah blah, yada yada yada. It is becoming, indeed, nauseating reading about these crude attempts to prevent Russia's Eurasian integration, which is now irreversible, and especially from the nation (France) whose President, Macron that is, still thinks that Russia's GDP size is that of Spain. No, really. It is, of course, understandable that France has her own interests and visions but those are hardly compatible with those of Russia. I can not even conceive what can possibly be substantively discussed between Shoigu and France's Defense Minister--what kind of "cooperation", "cooperation" in exactly what? I understand that some intelligence exchange on terrorist threats is not only possible but highly desirable, but high level military cooperation is simply out of the question and it is not up to France, or Macron, to make such decisions.  

Make no mistake--I am all for talking. It is better to talk than to fight, but this talking, with one side (France) having no sincere desire to do anything in good faith with Russia, changes absolutely nothing in the structure of the Russia-West relations. France will still remain NATO member, she will still be dependent on the United States' will, which, in the end, will get France back to where it belongs as an American lap-dog. Airbus still WILL get competition from Russian aerospace products, coordinates of French military installations will still be in the flight plans of Russia's stand-off weapons, Russia also will never forget France's criminal role in both Libya and Syria. Russian-French trade is minuscule and the times when my and generation of our parents were charmed by French cinematography, music, perfumes and style are long gone. The charm is gone together with, indeed, French cinematography, music, style and France's sovereignty as a nation of French people. Perfumes still remain, but for how long until creeping Sharia will forbid the use of alcohol in them, who knows. So, do not expect anything of substance from these "negotiations". In the end, they are mostly Macron's PR campaign designed for domestic consumption in France and reminding voters that France still matters. Europe has made her choice and Russians, overwhelming majority of them, are keenly aware of it and that is the only thing which matters in this "security" configuration. Those who will need the sanctuary in Russia in the future--they will be welcomed, but as Alexander Blok foresaw it 101 years ago:

But we shall keep aloof from strife,
No longer be your shield from hostile arrow,
We shall just watch the mortal strife
With our slanting eyes so cold and narrow.

Unmoved shall we remain when Hunnish forces
The corpses’ pockets rake for plunder,
Set town afire, to altars tie their horses,
Burn our white brothers’ bodies torn asunder.

I Seldom Use Poetry.

But Alexander Blok's magnificent 1918 The Scythians, being one of the most stunning in its prescience geopolitical poems of all time, I think, should be posted here. For those who want to see how Russian poetry must be recited (in Russian)--one can enjoy the "music", the sound and rhyme of it here, even if you don't know Russian:

But here is the best English version of it. 101 years on--it reads like it was written yesterday. 

Millions are you – and hosts, yea hosts, are we,
And we shall fight if war you want, take heed.
Yes, we are Scythians – leafs of the Asian tree,
Our slanted eyes are bright aglow with greed.

Ages for you, for us the briefest space,
We raised the shield up as your humble lieges
To shelter you, the European race
From the Mongolians’ savage raid and sieges.

Ages, yea ages, did your forges’ thunder
Drown even avalanches’ roar.
Quakes rent Messina and Lisbon asunder –
To you this was a distant tale – no more.

Eastwards you cast your eyes for many hundred years,
Greedy for our precious stones and ore,
And longing for the time when with a leer
You’d yell an order and the guns would roar.

This time is now. Woe beats its wings
And every adds more humiliation
Until the day arrives which brings
An end to placid life in utter spoliation.

You, the old world, now rushing to perdition,
Yet strolling languidly to lethal brinks,
Yours is the ancient Oedipean mission
To seek to solve the riddles of a sphinx.

The sphinx is Russia, sad and yet elated,
Stained with dark blood, with grief prostrate,
For you with longing she has looked and waited,
Replete with ardent love and ardent hate.

Yet how will ever you perceive
That, as we love, as lovingly we yearn,
Our love is neither comfort nor relief
But like a fire will destroy and burn.

We love cold figures’ hot illumination,
The gift of supernatural vision,
We like the Gallic wit’s mordant sensation
And dark Teutonic indecision.

We know it all: in Paris hell’s dark street,
In Venice bright and sunlit colonnades,
The lemon blossoms’ scent so heavy, yet so sweet,
And in Cologne a shadowy arcade.

We love the flavour and the smell of meat,
The slaughterhouses’ pungent reek.
Why blame us then if in the heat
Of our embrace your bones begin to creak.

We saddle horses wild and shy,
As in the fields so playfully they swerve.
Though they be stubborn, yet we press their thigh
Until they willingly and meekly serve.

Join us! From horror and from strife
Turn to the peace of our embrace.
There is still time. Keep in its sheath your knife.
Comrades, we will be brothers to your race.

Say no – and we are none the worse.
We, too, can utter pledges that are vain.
But ages, ages will you bear the curse
Of our sons’ distant offspring racked with pain.

Our forests’ dark depths shall we open wide
To you, the men of Europe’s comely race,
And unmoved shall we stand aside,
An ugly grin on our Asian face.

Advance, advance to Ural’s crest,
We offer you a battleground so neat
Where your machines of steel in serried ranks abreast
With the Mongolian savage horde will meet.

But we shall keep aloof from strife,
No longer be your shield from hostile arrow,
We shall just watch the mortal strife
With our slanting eyes so cold and narrow.

Unmoved shall we remain when Hunnish forces
The corpses’ pockets rake for plunder,
Set town afire, to altars tie their horses,
Burn our white brothers’ bodies torn asunder.

To the old world goes out our last appeal:
To work and peace invite our warming fires.
Come to our hearth, join our festive meal.
Called by the strings of our Barbarian lyres.

30 January 1918

Paul Craig Roberts About My New Book.

PCR wrote a review on my latest book and I give here some excerpts from it: 

Martyanov’s book is, in a way, two books.  One is about the revolution in military affairs that has left the United States behind.  The other is about the self-medicating and propagandistic version of reality that Americans mistake for reality.  Martyanov convinced me that the Pentagon’s war planners need to upgrade their understanding of war and how to conduct one, but I found more interesting the fake reality supported by controlled explanations from which Americans seem unable to escape that is described in the other part of his book.  It turns out that it is not only the insouciant general population but also the ruling elites themselves who are locked in The Matrix.

But one phrase which PCR used (I really wish I could have come up with it;)) is really succinct and beautiful:

                     Slogans masquerade as ideas

Damn, this is good. It also captures the essence of the contemporary political discourse in the United States. Indeed, where are the real ideas instead of nauseating in their repeatability talking points delivered often by people who absolutely have no business in what should have been the "marketplace" of the real thoughts? Bar some large scale thinkers, such as PCR himself, who constitute a constantly shrinking field of people with actual expertise crucial for saving the United States, all we have today is infotainment. But then again: what constitutes this "saving". What are its basic parameters and metrics? Economy? Absolutely! You cannot to anything without economy, healthy, working economy that is. Military power? Sure! But what are the extents of this power, what it should be and how should it be used? Crucial issue? Absolutely! But, in the end--it all comes down to people who constitute this entity which should be saved. 

As classic of Marxism, Lenin that is, stated once (correctly) that idea becomes a real force when it take possession of the masses. Today, there are no ideas, only slogans and they cannot substitute ideas which are badly needed. World became too complex and it requires new mechanism, instead of utterly corrupt and often incompetent think tanks, for generating ideas which really matter. In the end, those are not just about the fate of the United States, but about humanity as a whole and it is this humanity, a global community, which increasingly doesn't see the future in what came to be known as liberalism, which increasingly comes across as totalitarianism in foreign and domestic policies. And this mutation is being countered as I type this. I finished one of the chapters in my new book with this:

Soviet poet Alexandr Trvardovsky left a Great Patriotic War literary masterpiece for the Soviet people—the epic Vasily Tyorkin, large and written in many self-contained parts, because many Red Army soldiers could never expect to read the entirety because of the possibility of being killed at the front. It was a poem about life and the combat of a simple Russian soldier, Vasily Tyorkin, which later transcended its literary origin and lived on in Russian folklore and culture. One of the most powerful episodes in Tvardovsky’s master­piece about River-Crossing under enemy’s fire, encapsulates the meaning of the titanic struggle against Nazi evil:

Бой идет святой и правый.

Смертный бой не ради славы,

Ради жизни на земле.

The battle goes on, holy and righteous

A deadly battle not for glory

                       For life on Earth

This is what at the stake for humanity today. No less than that. Maybe, more.    

Coincidental In A Good Sense.

Paul Craig Roberts wrote a piece on DJT symptomatically titled I Feel Sorry For President Trump. In it PCR arrives to several conclusion one the more important of which is this:

I knew that, unlike Reagan who had prepared his run over the years and had a movement behind him, Trump had not.  Moreover, also unlike Reagan, Trump had no idea of what he was walking into and no idea of who to appoint to important offices who might be inclined to help him.  Generally speaking, the value of a presidential appointment, such as the one I had, lies NOT in helping the president, but in helping the ruling private establishment.  Any Assistant Secretary can be very helpful to private interests and end up a multi-millionaire.  Indeed, most of them do. 

Needless to say, and it is a consensus among people, who at least try to think beyond 24-hour news cycle of the main-stream media sewer, that Trump's appointments for his national security team are an epitome of a disaster. Truth is, Trump can not be THAT stupid not to recognize that in his National Insecurity Adviser John Bolton he has a pathological liar and dangerous sociopath who couldn't care less about POTUS visions and desires. It seems that some recent rumors around White House indicate that it finally started to get to Trump that Mr. Bolton is not there to "advise" POTUS on any serious national security issue--for that Bolton has zero qualifications--but to involve the United States in as many conflicts on behalf of Israel and Saudi Arabia as humanly possible. 

But rumors persist and here is what is beginning to trickle down. 

Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton is being left out of key meetings and to all intents sidelined. No surprise there. He’s deranged. 

Well, if true--good for Trump, for now. I will refrain from proclaiming it to be good for all of us, having an idea about the "level" of "expertise" of current US pool of national (in)security "experts" we may still get some other weirdo in place of Bolton, IF....which remains to be seen. But, as I said not for once and wrote about this profusely--lawyers and political "scientists", unless they becoming such after having extensive training in real military-intelligence and real economy fields, should not be even considered for positions of influence in what amounts to the question of war and peace, be it economic, political, diplomatic, ideological, let alone actual, kinetic warfare waged by the armed forces. Enough with incompetent, pompous and ego-driven war-mongering non-entities forming US foreign policy (disastrous) and military-political (also disastrous) doctrines while not being able to know shit from shinola, let alone weight of salvo by stand-off weapons from the weight of their bowel movement upon learning for who (them, that is) those weapons are coming in case of war. 

I think PCR does a good job addressing those problems with Trump's cabinet (or lack thereof) and it gives at least some hope that people like PCR and Tucker Carlson raise their important voices in defense of the last vestiges of sanity in D.C. If this creep Bolton will be removed by Trump at some point of time (better earlier than later), we all may then conclude that we might have dodged the bullet. I have a suggestion, although staunchly anti-Iranian, how about DJT does some justice and get General Flynn back to a position from which he was removed by military-intelligence-political junta ran from DNC headquarters as a result of their Russiagate witch-hunt? That, together with putting Mr. Comey, Clapper and Brennan behind bars for treason and anti-Constitutional activity could be a good sign of at least some recovery within already largely compromised and tarnished Republic. Nah, I am being unreasonable....    

G-8 Russian Poll.

Russian daily Vzglyad positions itself as a business daily. It does, indeed, attract many comments from all kinds of public ranging from uber-liberal loonies to normal people to armies of mostly Ukrainian trolls. I use Vzglyad merely as news aggregator and, once in a while, source of either decent or, opposite, down right stupid opinion pieces. In all, I don't take it too seriously. Yet, Vzglyad does provide good feel for public opinion in Russia (granted very roughly approximate) and here is one from two days ago regarding possible Russia's return to G-7, or G-8, if one wishes. 

25, 576 people were polled on-line and 92.3% of those responded negatively to the question if Russia should return to Great Eight. Here are slightly updated results--nothing changed. To interpret these results is really easy for anyone who knows Russia not from pages of NYT or WaPo, or Moscow Times, or Kommersant, but knows Russia's and Russian people. Russia doesn't want to deal with the so called West and doesn't see herself as a part of it, she sees her future in Eurasia. Modern West lost any value for overwhelming majority of Russians and this is not the heat of the moment poll--it is a well defined long term trend which has massive geopolitical ramifications. Why? How about this little piece of news: Russia and China signed new package of documents on military cooperation, which allowed Sergei Shoigu to call it (in Russian) a new stage of Russian-Chinese cooperation. This somehow coincided with Igor Korotchenko, who is one of Russia's main insiders on defense, stating three days ago at Solovyov's show, that Russia should extend her anti-missile umbrella over China (in Russian).

So, something is up and who knows what we will observe in coming months. Chinese meanwhile are moving people and hardware to Russia for Center 2019 military exercise. These are very big maneuvers and they also are designed to address some issues with inevitable exit of the United States from Afghanistan and a shitstorm which will happen there once US leaves. Somebody needs to clean up the mess, once the Taliban scourge starts pouring over the borders. I wish Zbig was still alive to see the fruits of his policies. 

    

$14.5 Billion Is A Large Chunk Of Money.

But this is precisely the sum India allotted for buying Russian-made weapons. It is a lot. As big defense sales (for Russia) honcho Dmitry Shugaev characterized  (in Russian) this portfolio: it is a breakthrough. As it is known well, India was under non-stop pressure by the United States trying to block India's purchase of S-400 systems. Something tells me, however, judging by the scale of this portfolio that new nuclear powered subs and, ahem, future 5th generation fighters are going to be the part of this whole deal. 

One has to keep in mind that India's contract for French Rafale attracted attention of some serious forces inside India. 

New Delhi: Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), headed by Congress’ Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, has picked up the Rafale jet purchase and the related CAG audit report among 107 subjects shortlisted for scrutiny. Other controversial subjects chosen by the PAC for its scrutiny include the Goods & Services Tax (GST) and its tax collection network GSTN. 

Rafale is an excellent fighter but the deal between France and India whose value is estimated at 7.8 billion Euros was for....36 fighters. This would make Rafale's cost, ahem, roughly 217 million euros a pop, or $240 million a plane. Of course, there were all kinds of caveats, including France investing 50%  of a contract into India's related sectors. The problem with all this is that even if to reduce Rafale's cost by 50%, one gets a price tag of $240/2=120 million a fighter. Rafale is a great aircraft, but it is not that great as to have a price tag of $120 millions. For "fly away cost" Rafale's in 2013 went for around 79 million Euros, or $87 million. Still very high but nowhere near $120 mils. Enter those nasty Russkies. 

Rumor has it that SU-35, which is a monster of a fighter-plane, goes on the market for roughly $65 millions as a base price. Russian-Chinese contract for the regiment (24 planes) of SU-35S is valued at $2 Billion, which makes the cost per single SU-35S (Russian, full capability, version) at around $83 million--still less than Rafale under the most favorable conditions. The math is really simple here. I am not going to go into fanboys' comparison of Rafale and SU-35S, both are superb fighter planes, with Sukhoi having one obvious edge over French fighter--super-maneuverability. But then again, it holds this edge over any aircraft in the world. And, of course, now a juicy SU-57 is towering behind SU-35S and India finds herself in a conundrum. Truth is, Indians love Russian-made weapons. They always did, since good ol' Soviet times and, facing now a true revolution in military affairs, (needless to say India knows this through Joint Russian-Indian Venture Brahmos really well), India wants those technologies. If Turkey can have them (some of them), India for sure, having a long record of friendly relations with USSR/Russia, have more than a fair shot at upgrading herself to cutting edge weapon systems. After all, India is a genuine candidate for crossing into the hypersonic paradigm, with her Brahmos, sometime next decade. 

What else was discussed with Indian side in terms of weapons I don't know and cannot know but the sum of announced portfolio is really gigantic and we all may state pretty confidently that India does it not just for obvious geopolitical considerations towards China and Pakistan, but also having some thoughts about the United States which becomes increasingly unpredictable and, certainly, views Indian Ocean SLOCs, or, rather, their interdiction, as crucial in curtailing China's BRI project. India, meanwhile, wants to view Indian Ocean as India's Lake and that requires even larger investment into the modern navy. Enter those damn Russkies again, wink, wink, who know that India needs ships and, most importantly, subs. And all that, as you may have guessed it already, requires all those enablers, those sensors, combat management systems and other pretty expensive things going under C4ISR moniker.  And then, of course, there are all kinds of joint ventures possible for joint manufacturing of... a lot. So, let's put it this way, Prime Minister Modi had a very fruitful visit to Moscow. 

Soviet Mowgli (with Kaa Python) And TU-95.

There is an uncanny similarity.  

Both in appearance and in mission.