Introduction
I have been putting off writing about this topic for a very long while. In fact, I wrote several articles trying to explain the self-evident truism that the US/NATO/EU does not have a military option in the Ukrainian war. First, in an article entitled Remembering the Important Lessons of the Cold War I tried to explain that the reason the Cold War did not turn into a hot, shooting, war is that both sides understood that they simply could never win and that any escalation in strikes and counter-strikes could very rapidly lead to a intercontinental nuclear war, something which neither side was willing to risk. In a piece entitled Making Sense of Obama’s Billion Dollar Hammer I tried to show that all the money the US will by pouring into “European security” is just a grandiose bribe for some European elites and that it had no real effect on the ground. A few days later I posted an article entitled Why the US-Russian Nuclear Balance is as Solid as Ever in which I tried to dispel the myth prevalent in the West about the putative state of disrepair of the Russian military in general, and of the Russian nuclear forces in particular. Lastly, in a piece entitled Short Reminder about US and Russian Nuclear Weapons I tried to show that in reality it was the US nuclear forces who were in a state of disrepair. And over and over again, in many comments, I tried to lay out the reasons for which I simply did not believe that the US/NATO/EU would dare to attack Russia. In summary, I will say this: the US is not nearly as powerful as the US propaganda claims. Without going into long debates about what “victory” and “defeat” mean, I will just say that in my personal opinion the last time the US military fought well was in Korea, and even there it had to accept a draw. After that, it was all downhill. This is not the fault of the US solider, by the way, but by the fact that big money and politics got so heavily involved in the US military that they corrupted everything. This is most evident in the USAF which still has superb pilots, but who are given a terrible choice: either fly on good but old aircraft or fly on new but terrible ones (I believe that given the choice, most would chose the former). As for the European NATO allies, they are such a joke that they hardly deserve mention. They even look bad on a parade.
As for a military option in the Ukraine, it appears unthinkable to me not only because, frankly, I don’t see a single military in the West capable of taking on the Russian military in full-scale battle, but also because geography powerfully argues against such a crazy idea (the very same geography which would make it impossible for Russia to try to invade western or even central Europe).
And yet, something in all this very logical reasoning felt wrong to me. A few days ago it finally hit me. What bothered me was
The American Duck
Among the many beautiful and witty expressions and neologisms Americans use, I always loved this one: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. This so-called “Duck test” is funny, but it is also a powerful logical method which ended up chewing at me day after day after day. Here I was, all sure and certain that the US/NATO/EU would never consider such a ludicrous notion as the one of an military attack on Russia or on Russian forces. But kept hearing the voice of the American Duck telling me: look at what they are doing, what does that look like to you? Suspend your conclusions and just tell me what are you observing? Tell me, if they had decided to escalate to the point of a military confrontation with Russia, would they be doing things differently? And a few days ago, I threw in the towel (at the duck, of course) and had to accept that while I did not know what they were thinking or what their intentions really were, it sure looked to me like the western plutocrats had decided to escalate the crisis has high as possible.
In truth, I have to admit that when I studied the theory of deterrence in the 1980 my teachers always insisted that this theory of deterrence was predicated on what they called a “rational player”. To put it simply – how do you deter a lunatic? Or a desperate man with nothing to lose? Or a person hell-bent on mutual destruction? The truth is, you cannot. Deterrence assumes a rational actor making a logical decision about unacceptable costs. As far as I know, nobody has ever developed a theory of deterrence applicable to a madman. When I initially wrote my pieces explaining why I believed that a US/NATO/EU attack was impossible a lot readers posted comments saying that while maybe the top US military command was still mainly composed of rational men, the US imperial elites had clearly gone crazy a long time ago and that they were so stuck in their arrogance, their imperial hubris, there delusion of invincibility and their knee-jerk and systematic use of violence that they could no more be considered as rational. At the time I replied that, yeah, sure, maybe, but what is the point of analyzing something crazy. How do you try to make sense of the suicidally insane?
And yet, this is what I propose to do today. I will try as best I can to try to place myself in the mind of these lunatics and see what they could try doing, and what the consequences of that would be. I will go through several possible plans that these crazies might have starting from the most limited one and then going up the insanity slope.
Plan one: a symbolic and limited intervention
This plan is already underway. We know that there are US military advisers in the Ukraine, including at least one general, we know that the Dutch and Australians will be sending in a lightly armed force to “protect” the investigators at the crash site of MH17 (although how a few men armed with assault rifles can protect anybody from Ukie artillery, tank or mortar fire is anybody’s guess). Then there are all the reports of foreign mercenaries, mostly US and Polish, fighting with the Ukie death squads. There is also some good evidence that Poland is sending military equipment, including aircraft and, possibly, crews. Well, all of that is dumb and serves very little useful purpose, but that is what the West is so good at: pretending. If this plans stays at this level I would say that it is not very important. But, alas, there is a nastier possibility here:
Plan two: a tripwire force
This is just an extension of plan one: bring in a few men, and then have them killed. This would trigger the needed “popular outrage” (carefully fanned and reported by the corporate media) to force the Europeans to accept more US sanctions in Europe or even some kind of “EU-mandated” “peacekeeping force”. Of course, if the Russians or the Novorussians do not take the bait and fail to kill the “observers”, US/NATO false flag teams could easily do that. Just imagine what a heavy-mortar strike on a building with these OSCE observers would look like. The junta in Kiev would be more than happy to “invite” such a “peacekeeping” force into Novorussia and since this would be an “invited” force, no UNSC Resolution would be needed. Finally, such a “peacekeeping” force would be regularly reinforced and augmented until it could basically cover the flanks of the Ukies in their attacks against Novorussia. This force would also assume the command and control of Ukie forces, something which the Ukies could greatly benefit from (their current command and control is a mess).
Plan One and Plan Two assume that Russian forces stay on the other side of the border and that the only opposition to such a deployment could come from the Novorussians. But what if the Russians decided to move into Novorussia either to protect the locals or stop his limited US/NATO/EU “peacekeeping force”? Then the US/NATO/EU would have to take a dramatic escalatory step send in a much bigger force, more capable of defending itself.
Plan three: UPROFOR on the Dniepr?
This is the Yugoslav scenario. The West would send in something on the order of 10 battalions which would each be given an area of responsibility for “peacekeeping”. Then police forces would be also sent to “maintain law and order” and EU commissars would be sent in to “help” the local population “express their will” and “organize” a local government. Soon there would be some kind of EU-run election and all the Novorussian forces would be declared “bandits” from which the local population need to be “protected”. Since Strelkov himself fought in Yugoslavia, as did many other Russians, I don’t believe that the Russians or Novorussians would fall for this one. I think that Russia would express its opposition to such a plan and that if she was ignored, she would move in her own forces along the line of contact.
This might be the US/NATO/EU endgoal: to create a Korea like “line of demarcation” which would isolate the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s republics from the rest of Novorussia and the rest of the Ukraine, this would mean getting plenty of Kosovo-like “Camp Bonsteels” all along the Russian border and it would make it looks like the “Wartime President of the One Indispensable Nation” “stopped the Russian Bear”. Finally, it would create a perfect Cold War like environment in which the western 1%ers could continue to exploit the 99% while constantly scaring them with the “Russian threat”.
Plan four: Operation Storm in Novorussia and Crimea?
I would not put it past the folks in the Pentagon and Mons to try to pull off an “Operation Storm” in Novorussia and even possibly Crimea. That is the scenario Glazev fears: the US/NATO/EU would put enough forces inside the Ukraine to allow it to survive long enough to mobilize a sufficient number of men and equipment for a lightening fast attack in Novorossia and even possibly Crimea. And, in theory, if we assume the Banderstan does not collapse under its own weight and the economic disaster, the Ukraine has the resources to mobilize far more men and equipment that the tiny People’s Republics of Donestk and Lugansk or even Crimea. But that, again, assumes that Russia will let that happen, which she won’t, so now we have to look at the really crazy plans:
Plan five: First “Desert Steppe Shield” then “Desert Steppe Storm”
That is a crazy notion: to do with Russia what the US did with Iraq. First, to place down a “protection force” in the Ukraine, isolate Russia, and then attack in a full-depth and full-scale determined attack. We are definitely talking about a continental war with a fantastic potential to turn into a world war. This plan would have be based on two crucial assumptions:
1) The US/NATO/EU conventional forces would be capable of defeating the Russian military.
2) If facing conventional defeat, Russia would not use nuclear weapons.
I think that both of these assumptions are deeply mistaken. The first one is based on a mix of propaganda, bean counting and ignorance. The propaganda is something which western military are very good. They are not. Most western armies are a pathetic joke, and those who can fight well (the Brits, the Turks) are too little to matter. That leaves the US military which have capabilities far in excess of what its NATO allies can muster. Just as in WWII all the serious fighting had to be done by German units, in case of a WWIII (or IV?) all the serious fighting would have to be done by Americans. The problem is that the Americans would have an extremely hard time bringing in enough forces to really make the difference. In any case, I have the biggest doubt about the current fighting capabilities of the US Army and Marine Corps. Faced with a Russian battalion defending its own soil I think that an equivalent USA/Marine force would get slaughtered.
The “bean counting” is when you compare all the NATO APCs or tanks to the number available to the Russian military. The corporate media loves this kind of charts in which soldiers, APCs, tanks, aircraft and other gear are compared. Professional analysts never use them simply because they are meaningless. What matters is how much of that gear is actually available for battle, the kind of tactics used, the training and morale of the soldiers, the skills of their commanding officers, and stuff which is *never* mentioned: supplies, logistics, petroluem, lubricants, ammunition, lines of supply, medical standards, even food and weather. Bean counters simply never see that. But one could argue that the number of trucks is more important to a military than the number of tanks. Yet trucks are never counted. But yes, on paper NATO looks huge. Even though most NATO gear could not even survive your average Ukrainian road, nevermind the winter.
But let us assume that the Hollywood image of the US military is true: invincible, best trained, best armed, with a fantastic morale, led by the very best of the best officers, it would easily defeat the primitive Russian military, armed with antiquated weapons and commanded by fat drunken generals. Okay, and then what? If is the official Russian nuclear deterrence doctrine that in this case Russia would use nuclear weapons. Since even in Hollywood movies nobody makes the claim that the US anti-missile systems could stop Iskanders, cruise missiles or even gravity bombs, we would have to accept that the invincible US force would be turned into radioactive particulates and, that, in turn, would leave the US President two terrible choices: a) take the loss and stop b) retaliate and the second option would have to include the location from where the strike came from: Russia proper. That, of course, would place the following choices for the Russian President: a) take the loss or b) strike at the continental United States. At this points nuclear mushrooms would start appearing all over the map.
Now please make no mistake: Russia can not only destroy Mons, the Pentagon and Cheyenne Mountain (just a matter of placing enough warheads on the right spot), but also every single major city in the United States. Sure, the USA can retaliate in kind, but what kind of consolation would that be for anybody left?
I cannot believe that the US deep state would truly, deliberately, want to start a planetary nuclear war. For one thing, US leaders are cowards and they will not want to take such a monumental decision. A far more likely version is that being stupid, arrogant and cowards they will stumble upon just that outcome. Here is how:
Plan six: American football’s “Hail Mary”
In American football there is a specific pass which is used only when seconds are left on the clock and your teams is badly losing anyway. Basically it works like this: every single person who is not defending the quarterback rushes to the endzone, as do all the defenders, and the quarterback then just throws the ball straight into that zone with the very slim hope that one of his own players will catch it and score a touchdown. This is called a “Hail Mary” for very good reason as only a miracle makes such a desperate plan work. Most of the time the ball is either fumbled or caught by the other team. But, very rarely, it works (see here).
I can very much imagine a desperate Obama trying to show the American people that he “has hair on his chest” and that he is not going to let “regional power” challenge the “indispensable nation”. So what he and, really, his administration risks doing is the following: to play a game of chicken hoping against all odds that the Russian will yield. This is my worst nightmare and the worst possible assumption to make because Russia cannot yield.
In March of this year I issued a warning which I entitled “Obama just made things much, much worse in the Ukraine – now Russia is ready for war“. What prompted me to issue that warning was the fact that the Council of the Russian Federation has just unanimously passed a resolution allowing Putin to use Russian armed forces in the Ukraine. Since, this resolution has been repealed at Putin’s request and for obvious political motives, but the mood, the determination is still there. In fact, I think that it has grown much stronger.
There has been much useless speculation about Putin, his motives and his strategy. This is way bigger than just Putin. If the US/NATO/EU really push too far, and that includes a genocide in Novorussia, an attack on Crimea or an attack on Russian forces, Russia will go to war, Putin or no Putin. And Putin knows that. His real base of support is not in the Russian elites (who mostly fear him), but in the Russian people (with whom his current rating are higher than ever before). And Putin himself openly spoke about the “threats to Russian sovereignty” though he did add that because of the Russian nuclear forces there was, in his opinion, no immediate threat to the Russian territory.
If the US decides to play a game of chicken with Russia, then it will do the same thing as a car driver playing a game of chicken against an incoming train: regardless of the train’s driver, the train is on tracks and its momentum is too big: it cannot stop or veer away.
The problem is that the USA has a long record of making absolutely irresponsible statements which end up putting them into a corner from which they cannot bulge without losing face. Just look at the MH17 disaster: the Obama administration immediately rushed to blame the Russians for it, but what will it do when the evidence to the contrary comes out? What if Obama also draws a red line somewhere (it does not really matter where) and then forces Russia to cross it?
Sadly, I can imagine the USA declaring that the US/NATO will defend the Ukie airspace. I think that they are dumb enough to try to seize a Russian ship entering or leaving the Black Sea. Remember – these are the folks who hijacked the aircraft of Bolivian President Evo Morales to try to find Snowden on board. These are the folks who regularly kidnap Russian citizens worldwide (the last time the son of a well-know Russian member of Parliament who was kidnapped in the Maldive Islands). And, of course, these are the folks who did 9/11. Their arrogance knows no limits because they are profoundly evil sociopaths. For them the organization of false flag operations is a normal, standard, procedure. They almost triggered a war between the DPRK and South Korea by sinking a South Korean military vessel. They used chemical weapons in Syria not once, but several times. And the last time we had a Democrat in the White House, he was crazy enough to send two US Aircraft Carrier Groups into the Strait of Taiwan to threaten China.
My biggest fears
This is my biggest fear: some kind of desperate “Hail Mary” maneuver in which the US will try to convince Russia that “look, we are crazy enough to start this thing, so you better back off” not realizing that Russia cannot back off. The other thing which really scares me is that during the Cuban Missile Crisis everybody was aware of the stakes and most people were truly terrified. Now, thanks to the propaganda of the corporate media, almost nobody is afraid and hardly anybody is paying attention. Russia and the USA are on a clear collision course and nobody cares! How come?
Because if 9/11 proved anything is that there are things which most people are simply unwilling to contemplate, no matter how close and real they are. It would only make sense that the Empire of Illusion would be populated by a people in total denial. After all, illusion and denial usually go hand in hand.
Most of you, dear readers and friends, seem to be sharing with me a sense of total distrust in the sanity of our leaders. When I asked you whether you believed that the US/NATO were crazy enough to use military forces against Russia, an overwhelming number of you answered that “yes” and a good part of you was even emphatically sure of that. Why? Because we all know how crazy and deluded are Imperial Overlords are. Crazy and deluded enough not to quality as “rational actor”? Crazy and deluded enough to play a game a chicken with a train? Crazy and deluded enough to risk the planet on “Hail Mary? Alas, I think that this is a very real possibility.
But what does Uncle Sam really want?
There is a gradual realization in Russia that for Uncle Sam this is not about the Ukraine. It is about Russia and, specifically, about regime change in Russia. A vast majority of Russian experts seem to believe that the US wants to overthrow Putin and that this entire war in the Ukraine is a means to achieve that. As a very cynical joke going around now says “Obama is willing to fight Putin down to the very last Ukrainian”. I think that this is correct. The US hopes that one of the following will happen:
1) A Russian military intervention in Novorussia which will allow the US to restart a Cold War v2 on steroid and which will also fully re-enslave Europe to the USA. Putin would then be blamed for falling in the US trap
2) The creation of a US-run “Banderastan” in the Ukraine. That would ‘contain’ and destabilize Russia. Again, Putin would be blamed for letting that happen.
3) A “nationalist Maidan” in Russia: this is what is behind the current Putin-bashing campaign in the blogosphere: to paint Putin as a weak and/or corrupt man, who traded Crimea for the Donbass (you know the tune – these folks even comment on this blog). These efforts are supported and, sometimes, even financed by Russian oligarchs who have a great deal of money involved in the EU and who really don’t need the current tensions. Here Putin would be blamed for not doing enough.
In all three cases, Putin would risk a (patriotically) color coded revolution which would, inevitably, bring either crazy rogue ruler or a clueless fossil to power (a la Zhirinovsky or Zuiganov) or, much better, a pro-American “liberal” (a la Medvedev). I think that all of these plans will fail.
Putin will not give Uncle Sam the intervention he wants. Instead, Russia continue to support the Resistance in Novorussia until Banderastan goes “belly up”, i.e. for another 30-60 days or so. As for the “nationalist Maidan”, the Russian people see straight through this “black PR campaign” and their support for Putin is higher than it ever was. It’s not Putin who does not want to intervene overtly in the Donbass, it is the Russian people. The attempts at stirring up anti-Putin by first stirring-up anti-Strelkov feelings have completely failed and, in fact, they have backfired. A lot of these “hurray-patriots” are now overly called “useful idiots” for the CIA or even provocateurs.
Finally, while they are at this point in time only rumors, there seems to be more and more specialists of the opinion that MH17 was a deliberate false flag by the US. If the news that the Ukies did it ever becomes public, then the entire destabilization plan will go down the tubes. At this point, I would not put anything, no matter how crazy, past the US deep-state.
And that is a very scary thought.
The Saker
Saker, I’m wondering if you and your correspondents can shed some light on Yats’ resignation and the Austerity thing.
To me, this is a race to Austerity, and I think it’s the internal issue of Ukraine that will settle things.
Ukies aren’t that prosperous, their government and commercial sector is corrupt at third world levels. Losing/Cutting pensions, health, education to the bone I think would cause some unrest.
Ironically, the rabid dog Ultranats might bite their neoliberal masters over it. Any thoughts?
The first step, anyway, is the militarization of Ukraine, based on (on paper) the hundreds of thousands of conscripts.
Since they don’t want to fight, Step 2 will collapse.
Russia isn’t Serbia.
Thanks, Saker, you always give food for thought even though it is often hard to swallow!
Again we can theorize and gameplay all we want but there are many known unknowns in this situation.
1.Are the German big and small businesses that are not part of their 1% going to co operate with this economic assault on Russia using them as unwilling Kamakazi pilots? I think not–this is not pre Nazi Germany of the 1930’s
2.The Ukrainian people themselves–they are not demoralized (however cynical and maybe a bit bigoted). I saw the turnout of thousands of people in Odessa placing wreaths in front of the Trade Union Hall.
3.The Russians. What happened to those 4 ballistic missiles reported by CNN and so mysteriously disappeared as a hot news item? This is significant. If the Russians just shot them down and no one said anything on either side this is of supreme importance. I went to the same University as Cheney did but we were on the opposite sides of the barricade then and now. What I learned as a crowd monitor was that these types are bullies and if faced calmly and resolutely and with about 50 strong guys standing behind my 5 ft 2″ self, they will back down. OK. so the Russian military just calmly and efficiently shoots these missiles down and says nothing. The guys in Washington go–“Oh!” and say nothing.My military expert friends say that the Russians have the best anti missile system in the world something called the S-4? When does a de facto no fly zone become no fly zone indeed? No fuss, no muss–just do it.
Let’s be clear about Putin. ( I beg forbearance from those who will not share my frame of reference on this) He
is here to take it as his sacred responsibility to defend Mother Russia. He knows how to do it because he has done it before. He is not “nice” and does not pretend to be “nice”. He intends to wield power and that ipso facto is not “nice” This is a man who when asked if he will punish the department in charge of running the metro in Moscow says, “Responsibility should always be personal. If the accident is one person’s fault and can be proven to be so, then he will be punished.” Putin has plan A, plan B and Plan C and if necessary he can put all 3 in the air at once. His supply lines are short, his people support and trust him, and he does not have allies whose people gather to chant–No school tomorrow in Gaza! All the Arab children are dead.
4. The Americans. The shadow government problem. This is where it gets murky because these guys hide,and manipulate and do not take responsibility. And unfortunately this is where the craziness lies. After the November mid term elections, the opportunist Obama will decide his real course of action. I see perhaps some terrible provocations but no major assault on Russia at this moment, but this is no time to let down your guard. Peacekeepers? Remember what happened to Patrice Lumumba under the aegis of the UN peacekeepers in the Belgian Congo? Please! I like Strelkov!
@know the truth
very good analysis there. Let’s not forget it was the casually minded petit bourgeois on Maidan who gave moral and physical encouragement to the Nazi knuckle-draggers during those cold winter days of 2013-14. Just as it was the butcher, baker & candlestick maker who bore huge responsibility for the rise of Hitler, it is likewise the “little Ukies” with their pathetic kneejerk Russophobia who pose such a danger to themselves, to Russians, to Europeans & to the wider world even.
Sometimes I wonder how would world look like today without any considerable resistance against the hegemon.
All of us controlled 24/7 with personal chip under our skin?
Much, much worse than 1984?
My point is, I can imagine worse things than nuclear WW4.
So maybe it sounds crazy, but I’m feeling really happier lately because there IS struggle against the US, NWO or whatever. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m *not* happy that people are dying and suffering. I’m praying for them.
Anyway, thank you Saker again for your blog and take care!
The west will never send main force armies into ukraine, but if Russia invades they will move their forces forward to cover eastern europe and a new cold war will begin. That said, I doubt Russian will invade, they dont have to.
http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/mike.shor/courses/game-theory/docs/lecture07/irrational.html
Read the above carefully. It’s from 1998. A document called “Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence,” written by the Defense Department’s Strategic Command, and obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. It says very clearly that projecting an image of irrationality is part of the US act.
Excerpt:
“The fact that some elements (of the U.S. government) may appear to be potentially ‘out of control’ can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts within the minds of an adversary’s decision makers,” its report said. “That the U.S. may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national persona we project to all adversaries.”
Saker, you need to take a deep breath and step back. Take in Akopov’s article again and prowl the pages of Zero Hedge and GlobalResearch.com a bit. And then seek a new epiphany.
Yes, Russia is the target. But the urgency of the moment and the motives of the Masters of the Empire cannot be understood apart from the unfolding collapse of the dollar and the struggle over who gets to define the reset, who comes out on top. It has as its central element, as Akopov makes clear, preventing the world from realigning around a new financial regime.
Another clear statement of this reality is to be found at
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-18/putin-advisor-proposes-anti-dollar-alliance-halt-us-foreign-aggression?page=8
Putin, rather than submit, has thrown down the glove and called the peoples and nations of the world to take up this challenge. The danger of a Hail Mary comes from the knowledge that for the Empire time is running out.
The west will never send main force armies into ukraine, but if Russia invades they will move their forces forward to cover eastern europe and a new cold war will begin. That said, I doubt Russian will invade, they dont have to.
According to Reuters (well, of course) we are apparently also lobbying various Asian countries, including China, to go along with our sanctions against Russia. Our only successes so far would appear to be Australia and Japan…
http://news.yahoo.com/u-looks-asian-cooperation-sanctions-against-russia-111210802–sector.html
Mr. Pragma,
I am soooo wanting to believe you! We’re certainly on the same page re: American desperation and need to buy time, but I think you have more faith than I do in both European bet-hedging — and cowardice, to call a spade a spade — than I do, and also more faith in the willingness of our top brass not to similarly cave to pressure of various sorts, including NSA blackmail or just simply the fear of demotion or shunning. Plus, a lot of good people have apparently been purged recently. So it looks like DC is filled even more than usual with ignorant, arrogant, elitist sycophants and I don’t know who’d be more dangerous, those folks or think-tank Neocons, to the extent there’s any real difference between the two.
Personally, i think Russia should take the first explicit official act of aggression by the US/NATO as a trigger. Escalate the situation massively, and continue escalating with hot war when opportune. Don’t be afraid of nuking the West it it comes to that. Might as well get it done with. Stop playing games.
I’ll repeat what I’ve said here before.
The US is not going to start a nuclear war with Russia – except possibly by accident, which is a real possibility.
However, I would not be surprised to see the US financing, aiding, even controlling a war by Ukraine against Russia.
However, that won’t work. Russia can move faster and more effectively against the Ukraine than the US and NATO can move effectively to make Ukraine a viable opponent. At least, that is so if Putin is committed to taking the initiative.
As I’ve said, the US isn’t going to stop this provocation of Russia until Russia makes them stop. So Putin might as well move now by the following:
1) Establish a no-fly zone over Eastern Ukraine.
2) Take out Ukraine military forces in Eastern Ukraine under cover of the no-fly zone, a la Libya.
3) Inform Kiev that if it does not set up new elections with candidates from all over Ukraine, including the east, then the next air campaign will be against Kiev.
4) Inform the US/NATO that any attempt to put any significant amount of foreign military forces into Ukraine will result in an immediate invasion and annexation of Ukraine.
Really, there is nothing the US/NATO can do to oppose such a series of steps short of a direct military attack on Russia which is simply not feasible by either NATO or the US. The US could possibly mount an air campaign, but with the Russian air defenses, this would be problematic. There is no way the US could put significant forces on the ground in Ukraine before Russia could take over the whole country.
“…the last time the US military fought well was in Korea,”
In fact the US army record in Korea was appalling. US units crumbled before the Chinese attacks. The Turkish UN forces, complained that US forces always left their flanks unprotected.
Mr Pragma, good to hear from you again. Many miss your voice over at MoA.
Gayle: “Something was weighing on him so heavily that he felt driven to make a statement at 1:00 in the morning, rather than waiting a few hours. It wasn’t the usual Putin – no pomp, no formality – just stark and immediate. He was waxen, exhausted, terribly grave.”
Could be the tragedy of the incident, that the Ukie Nazis and their NATO pals would stop to such a level to further heighten the tensions all around?
Probably me being naive, but this is an intersting read:
Who is Valdimir Putin?
http://thejubilee.wordpress.com/2014/05/15/so-who-is-vladimir-putin/
Farflungstar
From Zionist Occupied AmeriKa
Mr. Saker – truly an excellent if disturbing essay, with many great, thought provoking comments.
As for the US, I’ve come to the conclusion that it has turned into a radio controlled zombie, controlled from a shitty little country in the middle east.
Any damage to the zombie is unimportant, as the zombie is expendable. Anyone who has to face this zombie needs to keep this foremost in mind.
If nuclear war is to break out, it must be made clear that the very first country to receive nuclear weapons in anger must be the very same shitty little country.
Of course, if the shitty little country disappears off the face of the earth, then perhaps the reason for any nuclear war disappears as well…
You are right about the lack of rational behavior in a faction of the U.S. elites and the White House, which is doing their bidding. Looking at the moves Obama-Kerry are making, one should be alarmed. It makes no sense. With that in mind, here is why Three through Five won’t happen.
Three: “The West would send in something on the order of 10 battalions which would each be given an area of responsibility for ‘peacekeeping’.”
This or the bolder military escalations in Four and Five won’t happen. The political cost would be world ending for Obama and the Democratic Party. There is no appetite for this among the public and certainly not the level of passion to justify any use of the U.S. military this way.
Obama is out on a limb. He has no public support. 60-80% of the public opposed the level of involvement in Libya and Syria. Before the Iraq invasion, a majority of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents opposed any military involvement. They don’t care what we want and get away with this, up to a point. That point was reached before the massive attack on Syria. Obama faced certain defeat of that resolution in both chambers of Congress.
If he made commitments like this, Congress would turn him down. If he did it unilaterally, the uproar would be greater than it was over Syria. There is a very real and recent precedent for Congress to say NO.
That leaves Six. Obama is in a corner and looking bad. He can’t back down, although he’d like to, without paying a heavy political price. The “Hail Mary” option is there and he may be mightily tempted. However, he’d face internal opposition from the military and the other elite clans, the sane factions, would be right in there pushing against this. He may be sufficiently weak to try this but he’d pay a huge price politically.
Recall that General Martin Dempsey made sure there was no Syria attack by getting Obama to go to Congress first. Dempsey is playing lip service to the Ukraine mess but that’s just necessary lip service. If he opposed the effort, he’d have to resign and would, as a result, be unable to take a shot at stopping it.
Six is the real danger but it’s not assured.
The game changers are still there: a quick collapse of Ukraine’s army with some political cover in the central Ukraine in terms of demonstrations; a release of imagery/evidence that shows Ukraine shot down (missile or fighter) MH17, in which case the whole deal collapses; or, a release of information already there that so compromises Obama, he’s done with this adventure.
As we face certain calamities in the next 20 to 40 years due to climate change and as the world economy teeters, there are pressing concerns that need to be mitigated (climate change impact) or eliminated (economic instability). What a shame that we’re having to deal with this? It’s really outrageous.
I think you need to break down the factions:
1) Obama,
not really in charge of foreign policy but puts a brake on the neocons when he can. Whoever replaces him is likely to be worse.
2) neocons,
psychopaths, secondarily concerned with the Wolfowitz doctrine and full spectrum dominance but primarily with Israel’s enemies e.g. Syria and Iran and by extension the allies of those countries.
3) banking mafia,
I think they are rational but within the context of their own unique matrix of cost-benefit i.e. de-dollarization is much worse for them than it is for everyone else. They want to stop the BRICS de-dollarization plan and are prepared to play a game of chicken to the wire – not beyond it deliberately maybe but accidents happen.
(Between them the neocons and banking mafia own most of the politicians and media.)
4) MIC,
They are the wild card imo. They’d actually be better off with a President who wasn’t owned by the banking mafia who rebuilt the US economy as if the US had a real economy they wouldn’t be so dependent on the dollar, petrodollar and global banking fraud to pay the bills.
5) US public and the EU,
Apart from the UK version of neocons and banking mafia nobody else is interested in this war however they can be pushed into it one step at a time.
The neocons and banking mafia control most of the western media between them so it looks like there is a united front but it’s an illusion. Now, given enough time that media domination can eventually create a public mood for war but only over time. At the moment the neocons can’t just say “let’s attack Russia” because nobody would come. They have to lead people to war step by step.
nb It took a shot down airliner just to get sanctions.
The next steps will be trying to fund Kiev directly while building up a large proxy army in Ukraine through supplying arms and advisers.
They’ll want to finish off the rebels as quickly as possible but if they can’t then they’ll seal them off into as small an area as possible – maybe with NATO peacekeepers to act as a tripwire along the main Russian border.
The main target will be Crimea. This will be where they build up Ukraine forces and mount various provocations. They’ll say they don’t recognize Crimea as a part of Russia so an invasion doesn’t count as an attack on Russia.
All this will take a while with a lot of opportunities to throw a spanner in the works along the way.
In particular i’d say:
1) Find out if there were any dirty tricks involved in MH17. (I assume there were but there may be guilty secrets on both sides stopping the info being released.)
2) Try and detach global support from the US over their blatant moral double standards. This will help de-dollarization.
3) Economic warfare
4) Fortify Crimea – this is practical but also psychological. Part of the reason neutrals are going along with neocon nagging for a quiet life is they don’t believe they’d seriously risk a war. Fortifying Crimea illustrates the seriousness of the situation to the Europeans.
Saker, you touched on this earlier, the way the US & allies have treated Iran is probably a good indicator, the US, Israel et al rendered many many provocations incl assasinations of scientists and sanctioned Iran to the hilt, if they had a chance to attack they would have done it by now, nothing moral has ever stopped them from going to war.
The point is to chip away at a country until it’s weak enough to be safely attacked or color revolution invoked.
Full spectrum resistance is needed, something you’ve mentioned before as well, the Empire won’t rest, the resistance needs to be vigilant.
The foreign policy of the US is:
Where is the oil and who do we have to kill to get it?
The ultimate goal is to get control of all that oil and gas in central Asia. The US did not invade Afghanistan and stay for fifteen years because Osama bin Laden once lived in a cave there.
There was a movie the last ten years, I think it was “There Will Be Blood”, about the oil business. There was a line about “I drink your milkshake” referring to slant drilling to get your neighbor’s oil. Well, the US’s game for the last hundred years has been to drink other people’s milkshakes, and the biggest milkshake in the world is in central Asia.
Afghanistan was an attempt, but the TAPI pipeline plan did not work out. I would not doubt that the US had eyes on taking over the bases in Crimea as a way to project its power into central Asia (previous attempts in Chechnya and Georgia didn’t go so well either). Russia’s move to seize Crimea was a preemptory move to block the coup government from handing it over to the US.
So the plan, as best as I can see it, is to immediately shut Russian natural gas from Europe to financially weaken it, and meanwhile maybe have the pro-western oligarchs work into a position so that another Yeltsin can be put in charge to give away the store to Exxon, Unocal et al.
How far the US will push to do this is speculation. If you blow up half the world you will have less customers. Then again, if you create a nuclear winter there will be a higher demand for heating oil.
@Anonymous 22:45,
As you gave such horrible predictions against Russia,
I would like to know what is your Zionist predictions on Izzzzreal?
Blessing galore, eh?
Go Ziopoop in Mea Shea’rim.
Saker:
I have been saying many times now here that the end game is the overthrow of the present regime in Russia (not just Putin, but the entire current Russian state structure) and the decomposition of the Russian federation into nearly two dozen pieces which would obviously be much more managable for the Anglosphere in terms of imperial domination and resource extraction.
It is very foolish to think in terms of armies invading across the plains of Europe towards Moscow and I can assure you NATO and the US are not even beginning to contemplate that. Hitler made this terrible mistake, and even with eventual mobilization of over 10 million men at arms could not defeat Russia. But the mistake was not thinking that he could conquer Russia and achieve his goal of a border on the Volga on the line Astrakhan-Arkhangelsk, but to even force a contest for such a worthless piece of real estate. There is literally almost nothing of real value west of the Urals in the present Russian Federation. A little coal in Rostov and some iron ore in Kursk. Hitler knew this too. His serious war aims were conquering Ukraine and the Caucusus, not Moscow, which he only contested half-heartedly. This is also why the west has not bothered contesting Belarus. There is nothing there worth contesting.
No, the real vaue in Russia is in the geopolitical prize she won for herself at the start of the game int he 1600’s – the Urals and Siberia. Here is minerals and oil and gas and timber and hydropower and fresh water beyond much of the rest of the earth combined. Better yet they are almost uninhabited and connected to European Russia by little more than a thread of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
So now we have a clear goal – attaining a front line along the axis Astrkhan-Arkhangelsk – but from the east. European Russia will then become a normal European state, on par with Germany in population, as big as about 2.5 Ukraines in size, and totally isolated from the sea except through the pinch points of Denmark and Turkey. South Siberia will be a seperate and poor useless agrarian state. Siberia and the Urals will be cut up into a series of “Native” states with “free” peoples like the Yakuts, Khanty, Nenets, Buryat, Evenk, Dolgan, Ket, Chukchi, and Komi. All under Anglosphere domination. The Russians in these states will be expelled as colonizers who have overstayed their welcome, just as has happened to Russians throughout the former Soviet space.
Once these three goals are clearly understood – regime change, isolation of Russian back into Europe, and decomposition of the Russian state, we can then proceed to consider what methods will be used to accomplish them.
dear Where-Wolf,
i appreciate your comments, lol
Michael Collins,
I sure don’t remember any Republicans at all, and actually not that many Democrats either, frankly, being opposed to the Iraq War. In fact, it was mightly lonely seeing right through that charade and trying to stop it. But what interests me are your words about Dempsey bc I was pretty surprised to hear what he had to say at that Aspen Conference. So you’re calling it lip service and I sure hope you’re right — but you then said this: “If he opposed the effort, he’d have to resign and would, as a result, be unable to take a shot at stopping it.” Then when exactly can he oppose it?
@Daruma Doll
I will never tire saying it,
at the risk of being confused for hasbarat,
I agree with you, Putin has shown staggering weakness and bad judgement in not invading, even after the Odessa massacre.
Quote:This is most evident in the USAF which still has superb pilots, but who are given a terrible choice: either fly on good but old aircraft or fly on new but terrible ones (I believe that given the choice, most would chose the former).
The F35 is re baptized “Star Fighter” MarkII
A strange thought has been with me during the last six years of constant wars; ‘What if’—–Obama and his pals want to be president forever?
A war with a nuclear scenario seems to me to be as good a pretext as any for sending Congress home, and awarding the Supreme Court on a long vacation. ‘Executive order’ is how these dudes are ‘governing’ anyway, so what is the difference? Normal people in the US will only shrug their shoulders and go on about paying their living expenses; and as for the others—well, we have a lot of empty ‘homes’ in those FEMA camps, do we not?
This is so fantastic and juvenile, but things are very strange among humans, at times—and nothing can surprise me after the past 34 years of fantasies——oldman
and a tiny bother: So far, I have typed in the captcha 17 times and am still not accepted—i’m pretty tired from this—probably my comment IS juvenile, so thank you, anyway
Good article. Being a person who wants to prevent a global nuclear war I have to say this article is not bad but has some major mistakes. Yes the leadership in the USA / West is irrational but the leadership in Russia is also irrational if they do not recognize the American / western irrationality. Also you are wrong; it is possible to deter most mad people. Most madmen want to live. The corrupt criminal oligarchs, who now rule the west, are not all madmen who can’t be deterred; they would not have obtained their current power if this were true. They would be happy if they could launch a nuclear first strike against Russia, with Russia not being able to launch a full second strike and or if Russia wiped out 90% of the Western population. The oligarchs want to wipe out 90% of their own Western population anyway. They have their own private bunkers and believe they will be okay. If they think they will be okay in their bunkers they will start a nuclear war. It doesn’t matter that they won’t survive a nuclear war in reality, if they think they will survive it, that is all that matters, then they will start a nuclear war.
To avoid global nuclear war and the extinction of all human life, the Russian leadership has to make it clear to the global criminal elite oligarchs that they, their families and fellow criminal oligarchs will be targeted with nuclear bombs and die in any global nuclear war they start. It must be a nuclear war against the billionaires. Sadly I believe if Russia does not do this there may well be a global nuclear war soon. To make sure the message sinks in the Russian leadership must start to get the oligarchs in Russia working for the oligarchs in the West now, as is done in the West, with any persons who threaten the power of the ruling criminal elite, by heart attacks, car accidents etc. now. Don’t think of individual leaders. This is false paradigm, all dictators like kings have had their version of the royal courts and it is the royal courts (the dukes, princes, and counts etc.) that have the power. A king without his royal court is nothing. The western criminal oligarch elite (royal court) must be certain of their destruction in any nuclear war they start to prevent them from ever starting a nuclear war.
First a warning. Some Anonymous provided a link to a Fedorov article(http://abundanthope. …). – WARNING – That is a psyop designed and run by a guy who promotes anti-Russian and pro zionist psyop dirt pieces incl. weird lies about Putin. That niqnaq guy is well known for his smearing and pro-zio psyops!
Another Anonymous asked “Saker, I’m wondering if you and your correspondents can shed some light on Yats’ resignation and the Austerity thing.”
a) ratsenyuk is a completely remote controlled cia asset
b) today – surprise! – the ukratinian “parliament” “decided” that they do not accept ratsenyuks resignation
Any further questions? I don’t think so.
@Nora
It’s not simply cowardice. It’s more about the european “double whopper” problem. For one most europeans hate the eu. Not so much the official idea but the dirty profoundly undemocratic implementation. And even more so as they begin to see and understand that the eu is, in fact, just yet another tentacle of usa (although most still believe that the usa is somehow pushing the eu). The other factor is that – contrary to what the media and politicians tell – increasingly many europeans profoundly mistrust the usa.
Another big issue is throughout large parts of europe WWII was not the came, fought a little, won, glorified ourselves and got rich by taking over Germany (and later the eu) but for europeans it was extremely hard times with millions of deads, suffering, losing everything, aso. Moreover europe was and is 1000s of miles closer to Russia than usa; europeans are impregnated with that knowledge because they always knew that any WW3 or nato/Russia confrontation would be there, in their countries, that it would their houses and their relatives that would be bombed or nuked, no matter from which side.
Talking is cheap and even sanctions are relatively cheap. Going to war in the “coalition of willing mass murderers” 1000s of miles away from home is one thing. Inviting war right where they live is a very different thing.
Short: Forget it. Europe, with the possible exception of britland (usa’s ass cleaning country) will not go to war against Russia. Nor will they risk a war. Nor will they do anything that with high probability might drive Russia into military action. Period.
There is only 1 way to make that happen and that is a *tangible, credible, physical” threat from Russia. And even then the europeans would first try to negotiate. The breaking point is ukraines west border. As long as no Russian tanks cross over that line more than, say, 50 km, europe will not even consider military action.
Concerning the usa military I can’t say too much because that is not my focus. But I’m certain that your generals are not stupid. As for the purging I know too little. I only remember that one Admiral who some years ago tried to secretly provoke a war with Iran was left in command by “lidderasy ain’t everthang” bush but “yes, we can – lie” obama sacked him.
As for your politicians and their lunacy and readiness for war … oh, well, I’ve yet to see a politician go to war (himself). The usa, Pardon me, besides demanding a lot of attention by making a lot of noise, isn’t significant any more. And so is what their zio-puppets blabber.
( … part 2)
(part 2)
And how would they do that, even if they were insane enough. Where would they find no les than 500.000 soldiers that still trusted their country and were not completely worn out and suicidal enough? How would they bring them in? Russia would sink the us navy quicker than you can drink a coca cola. Etc. etc.
I like you Nora and that’s why I take the effort upon myself to write what I write. You see, you must wake up. The cruel reality is that the usa hasn’t enough modern equipment to attack Iran or France and much less Russia which *does have* gen 4 and 4++ jets and which is leading min. a decade in air defense systems. usa F-35 is grounded vaporware and even if it flew it’s far inferior to 25 years old Russian Su-27. And the F-22 must have been built *for* enemies, not against them, haha.
In simple words: usa couldn’t attack Iran. It didn’t have the weapon systems and it didn’t have the power, simple as that. After all, they couldn’t win against goat herders with little more than kalashnikovs.
Although I’m ready to confess that usa suicide would be one of the more eleant solutions for the current situation.
@Farflungstar
Thanks for the compliment. As for moa, that was b’s decision. Probably not a smart one (considering how it’s about Russia and the region now’) but I respected it and I don’t like games like coming back with another name.
As for Putin: I fully agree with the linked article. And I suggest to not interpret too much into a single moment. One thing is certain: Putin was not surprised. He’s not the kind of person to be surprised and the Russian services work quite well. I’m confident that Putin knows many things in ukratine before the local nazi commander gets to know them.
Too add just one simple, yet seemingly unexplored situation that is unfolding, let’s expand on a point made much further up the comment thread by @KC re “peak oil”.
@KC
To add to your proposition and while it is rather difficult to hammer this down to the shortest form, let’s propose a bubble that is ready to pop and cause a massive cascading “boomerang” effect. We’ll need to explore a much bigger perspective than jjst “oil” and add the typical boom/bust neo-liberal economic principls.
We need to consider that we are rapidly approcaching a the end portion of the neolib cycle known as the “commodities super cycle” which occurs far less.often than the other segments such as housing and individual controlled commodities.
This will be the first rime since the 1970’s dexoipling of the US Dollar from gold and the creation of the petro-dollar. What happens is that all commodities get far to over valued that they are worth to extract, refine and sell and in conjunction with the supply side economy. Once supply outstrips demand and the consumer prices get too high to ne affozrdable, remember this coincides with an over supply, either real or speculated comboned with over pricing at the demand side, to make up the profit margins. The greedy speculators ae very good at eploitungg for profit but this disrorts the true value.
This cycle seems to occur in 60-80 year cycles, instaed of the other 20 year “generarional” cycles. This happwned after the end of the inotial industrial revolution and rook 2 world wars to get the “global” economy on track.
This was anricipated which is one of the reasons the US Fed was created as the elite was no longer interested in propping up govt spending that was necessry to develop what is now called the Military Industrial Complex.
With the MIC, the elite were always assured a favourable return on investment regardless of the booms and busts that aggect the serfs and masses. They would never have to worry about having to pay the true costs of their speculative in element profiteering, the serfs of the individual States always did so, willinglly.
As we cans clearly see, eventually the oligarchs wage war against each other, knowing they will not have to pay the costs and this is way they become capitalists that live of the dole via corporate welfare. Some wealth goes bust while the others wealth booms as the citizenry goes boom and busts, in a nutshell.
These psychopaths do not really care, this has been worked in, or so they think. While the neocons/neolibs fact/figure distortions have been thoroughly “tested” with the war-dollar system, they have never been “tested” in a petro-dollar economy. They are playing with a form of fire to which they are unfamiliar and unwilling to consider. As the neocons like to state, either you’re with ’em or against ’em and the Police State and Propaganda State will assure your with ’em, period.
Short summary for a rambling rant, be prepared for the end of the Commodities Super Cycle as we prepare for whatever our version of the Industrial Revolution is. If that makes any sense…
Interesting context here about how the rest of the world views what’s going on: http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2014/07/30/why-obamas-russia-sanctions-are-doomed/
To continue my post, with Anglosphere goals for Russia known, consider the means to accomplish the goal.
For certain, it will not be by armed invasion, as the fighting, destruction and logistics all weight heavily against any such expedition.
Instead, look at events in the Soviet Union which forced the decomposition of that state against the will of 80%+ of its people and the aftermath of that catastrophe. Ethnic greivances were pushed to the hilt, especially in the Baltics, Galicia, Georgia, and Armenia, creating necessary friction. Traitors were encouraged in power in the Soviet regional governments – especially Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus. With chaos of seceeding regions and armed conflicts between different groups there was an economic and military collapse of the Soviet Union abetted by the corrupt leaders of the constituent Slavic regions against the central government and the other Soviet peoples. When the people’s government attempted to defend itself, it was violently put down by military traitors during the events of the so-called August Coup in 1991 and the Russian White House in 1993. Economic piracy was used to corrupt a new elite and impoverish the people and state. Results: population collapse in the Soviet space as deadly as WWII. Population growth stopped and shrank by 15 million in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics. Lost growth, emigration, plus actual decline was a net of 40 million missing people.
Now to Russia, the start is to encourage regional frictions, as Russia is much more ethnically homogenous. St. Petersburg vs. Moscow. Big western cities vs. rural areas and small cities. Northern Russia vs. the Caucusus. European Russia vs. Siberia vs. the Far East. The model has been perfected in America to create political tension needed to keep the people divided – Red States vs. Blue – North vs. South, Coasts vs. Interior.
Here it will not just divide the people but divide the country. We can expect to see attempts made to corrupt regional officials and oligarchic elites, to turn the western cities on the government under the specious claims of anti-European values. Here is where the value of the Ukraine project comes to play. Just as Ukraine has “suffered” from Russian culutral domination, a westernized Ukraine will be kept Russified so that its media organs can be turned 180 degrees to propagandize the Russian people in their own language. The goal is to divide Russians until they are ready to kill each other, and to get European Russians (especially northern urban European Russians) to come to believe Siberian and Far Eastern Russians are evil and ruthlessly exploiting the poor natives of Siberia, who need to be “freed” and “helped” and given “self-government”.
A sure way to divide Russians is a worthless brother war in Ukraine where political backing from the Cossack nationalist “hicks” in Siberia and the North Caucusus sends poor Muscovite and Petrogradian youths to die fighting Ukrainians. If this tactic doesn’t work (and it has failed so far) we can expect chaos in Kazakhstan (Nursultan Nazarbayev is getting older every year) to foment war there, as Russia cannot afford a NATOized Kazakhstan. Another front is to push Japan, China, and Mongolia together to recover their lost lands in the east by war – Sakhalin, Amur/Khabarovsk/Primor’ye, Buryat, Tanu-Tuva. Loss of these lands would destroy the Russian hold on Siberia east of the Yenisey River – certainly a good start to the ultimate goal. We can expect to see a Ukraine that survives the Novorossiya project attempt to “recover” by war Kursk, Voronezh, Belgorod, Rostov, Crimea, Krasnodon, and Stavropol. This is the stated foreign policy goal of Right Sector, thus we may expect it is also dreamed of by Svoboda and “Fatherland”. An ideal scenario for the Anglosphere would see Russia beset by such attacks on all fronts at once, as well as liquidation attempts on Transdnistria and Kaliningrad.
As many have commented the US acts irrationally, this is by choice because the US acts on game theory. There was a movie that showed that the US started vietnam because they wanted to show that the US was willing to throw away life to intimidate other strong powers like China and the USSR. There was no strong reason to get involved in another civil war after the Korean disaster. Game theory seems to work well in most situations because groups of people will behave in a particular way given a situation which can be predicted even if individuals will behave unpredictabely. It works wonders in the financial area because there is only fear and greed. In war also there is run or fight so in either or situations simulations will show very accurate outcomes. It is difficult to changethe outcomes given a certain input and it has worked well for the last 50 or so years since the theory was developed. They also made a movie on the guy who developed this who almost went insane but recieved the nobel prize later. If you look at situations where the US was involved, it always comes down this Game Theory. But if we dont know what the end game is, we wont have ways to stop it. It is the same here, but I think we already know a lot, the US$ domance is lower now, US standard of livign is droping, its time to rally the masses and allies away from non-essential actors, eg move trade and finance to the US/EU as a way to shore up the US$ and power projection. 2008 showed us things were blowing up and thats nto fixed and it is gettign very desperate and they are keeping a tight control on everything the world over using derivatives. Look how tightly controlled the price of Gold is. Looking at Silver, the US has shorted 250m oz’s of silver for a gain of less than 10%, the price should have doubled normally. Everything is tightly controlled or things will blow up. They want to gather everything to shore up defences so things wont go boom. Thats the desperation. The closer it is to blowing up, the tighter the control. We have seen this in price controls imposed by some governments before it breaks. To get the EU to break away from Russia things will get close to war. The further from war Putin goes, the more desperate the situation since time is running out and desperation gets worse. We think war is inevitable but thats is not the desired outcome. They have dropped Syria because it would not bring Russia into conflict with the EU and was a way to hide what they were doing in Ukraine.
@geoff29
That is unless God Himself intervenes, such as a devastating Biblical catastrophe, the Yellowstone Super Volcano erupting and taking down most of the US.
There will be a nuclear winter, but a bit healthier than with actual man made nukes.
As an Arab-Jew, I believe everything in the Scriptures can repeat itself, including Noah’s flood.
I read the latest commentary from AP as a credible evidence of a softening of the all-out belligerence of the West, even the introduction of the rationale for working out a compromise favorable to Putin, as they say. Here is the link: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-analysis-putin-cornered-over-ukraine-161356582.html.
Despite the headline, read closely:
“GROWING TURMOIL, UNPREDICTABLE CONSEQUENCES
Some in the West may hope that the sanctions will encourage members of the Russian elites as well as the broad public to demand a change of course.
However, the tightly controlled Russian political system leaves little room for dissent. Billionaire tycoons, some of whom have close personal links to Putin, stand to lose a lot from Western sanctions and would like Putin to soften his policy. But hopes that they may somehow persuade the president to pull out of confrontation seem futile, as the oligarchs are too scared to form any kind of united group, and official loyalties are closely controlled by Putin’s fellow KGB veterans who dominate the officialdom.
Many in Washington expected Putin’s businessmen friends who were hit by U.S. sanctions in March to push him toward de-escalation. The opposite has happened. Instead of encouraging a pro-Western opposition, more sanctions will likely further strengthen the Kremlin hawks, who may push Putin toward an even more confrontational and isolationist course.
In a sense, the Russian leader has become hostage to his own propaganda that has cast the West as an enemy of Russia.
Putin’s approval ratings so far have remained high, but if the economy starts collapsing under the brunt of Western sanctions his popularity would dwindle quickly. It doesn’t mean, though, that pro-Western democratic forces would have any chance to expand their presence on Russia’s political scene.
Amid the war in Ukraine and Western sanctions, the weak and disorganized Russian liberals have become increasingly marginalized, while extreme nationalist forces have strengthened considerably.
Economic meltdown would further allow nationalist groups to expand their sway, and Russian volunteers now fighting in eastern Ukraine may become an explosive element in a changing political equation.
The prospect of potential unrest could re-ignite fears that accompanied the 1991 Soviet collapse. Thousands of nuclear warheads, smoldering conflicts between a myriad of ethnic groups, separatist movements and crumbling industrial infrastructure that could lead to technological disasters make any instability in Russia deadly dangerous for the rest of the world.”
Dacian
I read a lot of comments concerning Peak Oil hypothesis and how this is triggering tension in the world. Perhaps. Peak Oil is a western concern related to the theory that Oil and Gas is a product of the decomposition and ageing of dinosaurs and vegetation.
Russian scientists do not follow this theory. Search the web for abiogenesis of Crude Oil. Most if not all of the Russian Oil finds have been discovered drilling deep wells in areas not unlike the Donbass in Ukraine where there was no likelihood of finding Oil by Western theories.
This is what Jhodorkosky was going to sell to Western interests (Exxxon).
So Peak Oil is a hoax.
Lots of thoughts here about whether the US might attack the Russians so here is my bit. Any of you people heard of an English singer-songwriter called James Blunt? That clanking sound that you hear with his music is likely the sound of his brass balls knocking each other and here is why.
In a former life, he was Captain James Blunt of the Life Guards Regiment on assignment in Kosovo in 1999. A Russian force had beat the NATO force into reaching Pristina airport (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incident_at_Pristina_airport) so an enraged US General named Wesley Clark ordered the British to block the runways and force the Russians out of the airport.
Blunt, as well as his superior (British) officers, said fuck no, we are not going to start WW3 for you and made it stick. Clark was forced into early retirement not that long afterwards but what if they had been US units who did follow his orders? Now there is General Philip M. Breedlove – an air force puke – in charge over there who appears to be equally reckless.
Just on a side note, Russia has banned the imports of fruits and vegetables from Poland which the Poles are making fun of. I wouldn’t be. Russia knows all about the training, military equipment and personnel that the Poles have been sending into the Ukraine and are now ready to deal with it. Ever see a movie like “Top Gun” where if you have an aircraft on your tail that has missile lock on you, you hear a steady whine in your cockpit as a warning? That is the same sound that the Poles are hearing right now!
Andrew
Let me give you a little hint:
There is an active, if little known (outside Russia) people movement (look up Fedorov) that ready and *eager* to clean out the 5th colonne. Eager as in “Putin need not say ‘go'” … him not any longer say “hold it” will suffice.
Russia’a major internal enemies are the oligarchs (well, most of them) and the cia ops, ngo, and whatnot.
Pretty much all the players and figures are known. The people movement isn’t just preparing to defend mother Russia against enemies, many, many of their members all over Russia are also eyes and ears.
Of course one wants to avoid it – but if it’s needed there will be a night of long knives cleaning out all the usa sponsored, lured, or seduced traitors and scum.
Don’t forget: It’s not the first time that usa and the oligarchs thought that they are untouchable and Putin proved them wrong.
They day the cleaning is needed it will happen. And Putin won’t have any blood on his hands. It will be just, let’s say, another form of “colour revolution” only this time the right people will be on the streets and *support* their country and president.
Of course Putin will initiate official police investigations as to who cleaned out the americans and their dogs and rats in Russia. After all Putin is a correct man.
And you know what? If guilty people are needed, there will be 1000s and 1000s of Russian who will smilingly confess whatever and go to prison for mother Russia, once she’s save (and patriotic guards will make sure that those men lack nothing for a convenient live. And patriotic judges will soon, say, after just 1 year, that procedural errors have been made, so those men must be set free).
There is only 1 sensible thing left to do for americans: go home. Leave right now. And don’t dare to play games with people who are way more educated and determined than you.
Shut up and don’t wake any of the 100s of million people on this planet who wait for the moment of your weakness to feed you with your own heart.
If you leave in time and stop mingling in Russia or fighting it you will live with your head 6 feet above ground. If you don’t get the message it’ll be 6 feet below.
What does people think of this picture?
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2diy0T6Tvz0/U9U-fGlhTZI/AAAAAAAAPCs/_IPnreq6Y_o/s1600/original+and+photoshoped+mh17+mh370.jpg
I think we have enough evidance that Reuters doctors their news. Just like every other so called news agency. People should really question WHY they would change a picture. Does the Kiev surge to capture the crash site have anything to do with this picture?
Friends, I am not affiliated with this book in any way, but I just finished it and believe it is ESSENTIAL READING to get a perspective on what is going on right now. The book is called “Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War” by Gerry Docherty and James MacGregor, and it is available on Amazon for Kindle. It clearly, comprehensively and cogently explains why BRITAIN plotted and instigated WW1, and why Germany was led by Britain into a trap to destroy it. Every tactic that is being used by the West today since (and including) 9/11 to wage war (Afganistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran and now Ukraine) is echoed in what Britain did to instigate WW1. Read it and understand the legacy of this pernicious evil force that controls Western societies.
http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-Secret-Origins-First-ebook/dp/B00CPR6IWK/
In all three cases, Putin would risk a (patriotically) color coded revolution which would, inevitably, bring either crazy rogue ruler or a clueless fossil to power (a la Zhirinovsky or Zuiganov) or, much better, a pro-American “liberal” (a la Medvedev). I think that all of these plans will fail.
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
And what do you think
if those people are in power that USA will Russia alone?
Never!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Russia must end up like Carthage
That is thinking of America no matter who is or who will be in power.
As far as the regime change thesis, I agree. As far as the US/NATO being desperate and panicking over their status, not so much. I suspect they are confident in their abilities to finish up with the job of controlling the planet. The Western leaders think their empire of chaos will win out and they are confident in their abilities to manage and leverage that chaos. No nuclear war baring some miscalculation.
I don’t agree with the idea of the US trying to win this conflict as a country. They seem to be doing everything they can to torpedo their own culture, economy, morals, etc. and grind their military into the dirt with endless unsuccessful conflicts worldwide that degrade their ability to defend their own borders. I think the game is much larger than US vs. Russia.
Mr. P,
This is almost like old times! ;~) I guess I wasn’t clear when I talked about cowardice: I was absolutely *not* talking about the European people, just their leaders, who look to me to be constantly trying to find the easiest way out of the mess they’re now in being caught between our power and hurting their own countries and interests. I know the people are still war-weary and war-leery, and I don’t blame them one bit. But also, I see us not doing a conventional war-war, even a la Iraq — much more like ISIS-type destabilization with drones, mercenaries, false flags, “accidents”, and whatever other associated horrors we can provoke on the sly and on the cheap. We’re bullies but the good (?) side to that is we’re also cowards and if any person or group of people can ever stop us, it would be Putin and Russia. And, via the BRICS and New Silk Road and going off the dollar, etc., etc., etc., they already are. It’s just that, while we’re assuredly going down, we’re quite likely not to go down without a fight — and I don’t think it’ll be regular military units, it’ll be what we’re doing in Ukraine and everywhere else, plus whatever else we’ve got that we can throw, Hail Mary style, anywhere near Russia. Out of spite, out of misguided self-interest, out of frustration, rage, desperation, wounded pride, fear, you name it. Just not out of any rational consideration, much less concern for any people, anywhere, to whom any of our decision-makers are not personally related.
From RT: Russia is still firmly holding its official, self-abnegating position that if you are in Ukraine and don’t like either fascism or NATO expansionism, you are still on your own:
1. “Russia’s General Staff chief, Gen. Valery Gerasimov has called “unacceptable” the use by the Kiev military of combat air force, heavy – including rocket – artillery and missiles against civilians. The comment was made during a phone conversation with US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.”
Please, define what you mean by “unacceptable.” And if it is unacceptable, then what?
2. “Ukraine’s parliament has approved deals with the Netherlands and Australia, allowing them to send some 950 “armed personnel” to secure the MH17 crash site in war-torn east Ukraine, AFP reports.”
The Kiev regime approves a very thinly disguised demand by NATO to establish its armed and very prejudiced presence in the middle of Novorossiya.
3. “A total of 363 Ukrainian servicemen have been killed and 1,434 people injured since the start of the military operation in eastern Ukraine, spokesman for the National Security and Defence Council Andrei Lysenko said.”
Why is RT carrying the Kiev’s lies and false casualty numbers–without any questions asked?
4. “Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) experts began a monitoring mission Wednesday along the Russian-Ukrainian border, visiting the border points of Gukovo and Donetsk. The monitors will be examining the situation at the border for at least three months.”
Upon Russia’s invitation–while Dutch and Australian special forces are supposed to arrive into the middle of the conflict fully armed and ready to fight (the antifascist militia), OSCE inspectors started monitoring the borders to assure the West and everyone else that Russia is not assisting the people and antifascist resistance who have risen against the junta. No self-regarding NATO state would have ever done that. No self-regarding sovereign nation would have ever done that. Did Russia surrender here part of its sovereignty (and common sense) of her own free will or because it was part of the Western “conditionality”?
http://rt.com/news/eastern-ukraine-army-operation-680/
Here is a better picture of the same window. It is a capture from a video stream. So much harder to doctor individual frames. When you see things like this, you can not just ignore it but most people do ignore it because it is difficult to reconcile the possibilities. You should ask WHY are so called reputable news agencies releasing pictures different than what we saw before. Why is the narratives changed now. Do you become part of the tinfoil club because you question WHY somethign you saw before is not the same as what they are showing us now?
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jdAb7AOVk24/U9Ju742Wb1I/AAAAAAAAO9Y/N0YNGM3DHmg/s1600/mh370+-+flag+-+mh17.jpg
For about the sixth time in a month, I will repeat a theme of my thinking about this crisis in human development and the existential threat to Russia:
1. Russia must act with absolute clarity and communication directly to the American and NATO military that tactical nuclear weapons are in the mix for the protection of Russia, near Russia, Novorossiya, Crimea and all that is defined as Russia’s sphere of influence and strategic defense.
(Today, the chief of staff of the RF armed forces told this to Dempsey, Chief of joint chiefs of staff of the US armed forces.)
2. Putin wants Ukraine as a neutral country, frozen permanently out of NATO and within the sphere of Russia. (Russia will put up billions to support the economic needs of Ukraine and share the loan burden with the EU and IMF).
3. If the Hegemon persists with war in any form toward Russia, Ukraine will be wrecked into pieces and Russia will take it all, except for small sectors the Poles will grab. Russia can make this total wreckage happen. Most importantly, Russia wants Odessa. It must cancel this port as a possible port for NATO/US.
4. Russia must win the Ukraine, rid Kiev of the psychopaths, destroy the Right Sector army, neutralize Ukraine as a nation, diminish it into a helpless entity, a protectorate of sorts.
5. Nukes is how the West must go if it expects to fight Russia. Nukes for EMP to neutralize Russian defenses and command and control. There is no way to fight the Russian military without nukes.
Therefore, it has to be tactical nuclear war. Russia would counter anything from the US and NATO with nukes. So, it will never be a war without nukes from the get go.
6. A tactical nuclear war would go strategic in about seven minutes. ICBMs would be used to take out a few major cities. The US and NATO would use these first. Russia would fire all they have that survives to decimate the rest of the West.
7. Since the military necessity of the attack on Russia automatically, by doctrine and programming, goes to a full strategic nuclear force exchange, you can see why and how Putin holds the winning hand. You say how?
The military controls the weapons. They are not going to go MAD as a game plan. NeoCons and some evangelicals who are waiting for the Rapture might push the button, but the military never will.
Therefore, Putin can do whatever he wants in Ukraine. He can’t be stopped even by overwhelming military force because that triggers MAD.
What he needs to do is personally,( like Eisenhower did with North Korea and China in the 50’s, and Israel threatened to start a nuclear exchange in 1973, and probably others we don’t know), assert that the use of nukes is what is next.
Kennedy ended the Cuban missile crisis with nukes on the table. Sure Khrushchev got the IRBM’s out of Turkey that threatened USSR, but he knew Cuba would be obliterated with low yield nuclear weapons. They were on AF tactical bombers at MacDill Air Base, Tampa, Florida, waiting on the taxiway for the order to fly. (I know a pilot who had the lead squadron who shook JKF’s hand the night before, as Kennedy visited them.) Nikita had to save all the Russians in Cuba as well as Cuba itself.
If you have a weapon, you must be ready and willing to use it. Tactical nukes is the savior system for Russia.
Therefore, the West cannot defeat Russia. The West can only commit global suicide if it attempts any military action, except a proxy war.
Putin holds the winning hand.
The Media Ignores the CIA in Ukraine.
by BILL BLUNDEN
A few days back the Economist published an essay which dismissed the idea of fascists in Kiev as an illusory product of Russian propaganda[1]. This is a narrative which the editors at the Economist have put forth on a number of occasions[2]. Of course they’re not alone. A less flagrant article published by the New York Times editorial board used a weird double negative to assert that “Russian leaders prefer not to accept that the C.I.A. did not engineer the preference of many Ukrainians for what they see in the West[3].”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/30/the-media-ignores-the-cia-in-ukraine/
Saker: your analyses have become more and more realistic. I appreciate them.
However, there are a number of ducks in the flock.
Syria: It appears to have been the US military that advised Obama’s cabal not to attack Syria. McCain gave Dempsey a lot of grief over that when Dempsey testified before McCain’s (?) committee. (http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/18/heated-battle-between-mccain-and-military-chief/) Keep in mind that Brzezinski is one of Obama’s chief advisers and Brzezinski was against direct US military action against Syria. Additionally, if the US military didn’t know it in re Syria, it came to know later, when the USS Donald Cook was buzzed in the Black Sea by a Russian jet, that the Russians could jam the current US radar systems, blinding the US radar and rendering US ships and their cruise missles–well– dead ducks.
The shadow gov: back under Bush/Cheney, some nuclear bombs would up being flown from N. Dakota to another base w/o authorization. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_nuclear_weapons_incident) Someone uncovered the theft. All the airmen ducks involved had “accidents.” No one was left alive at the bottom of the command chain. Who ordered the bombs moved and for what purpose?
SS21(?) launches reported by CNN: apparently they were launched but never hit the ground. Blown up by the Russians? If so, that was quite a statement by the Russians. Went totally unreported. Be assured the US military knows the facts.
Brzezinski re Ukraine: contrary to his position on Syria, Brzezinski believes that keeping Ukraine attached to “Europe” is essential to prevent Russia from making the vital Asia-Europe connection:
“One of the keys may be found by looking back at Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard in which he wrote, “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”
“However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.
. . .
“Brzezinski wrote that Eurasia is “the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played,” and that “it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus also of challenging America.” (emphasis added)
http://original.antiwar.com/chris_ernesto/2014/03/14/brzezinski-mapped-out-the-battle-for-ukraine-in-1997/
He described Putin here: “Much depends on how clearly the West conveys to the dictator in the Kremlin — a partially comical imitation of Mussolini and a more menacing reminder of Hitler — that NATO cannot be passive if war erupts in Europe.” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/zbigniew-brzezinski-after-putins-aggression-in-ukraine-the-west-must-be-ready-to-respond/2014/03/03/25b3f928-a2f5-11e3-84d4-e59b1709222c_story.html)
The German ducks are still in the air, the article posted by you here the other day notwithstanding. Even if the Germans join the next tranche of sanctions it wouldn’t checkmate all Putin’s efforts to realign Germany with Russia’s economic interests, BRICS and all.
I expect the shadow government to resist at all costs the demise of the $US petrodollar.
There are psychopaths and sociopaths on the loose. We won’t be safe from them any time soon.
@ Nabil2020
Do the Arab Jews know who God was mad at all the previous times he blew off that magma chamber? I believe the last time was about 640 thousand years ago.
If Yellowstone can hold the lid on just a little bit longer, there won’t be any humanoids here for the next one either.
For those who may not have followed up on PC Roberts recent warning about nuclear winter. The available climate simulation based the expected loading of stratospheric soot yielded a lengthy period of well below present temperatures starting with 3 to 4 years of daily lows below freezing for most of the globe. Sometimes way below freezing! Greatly reduced sunlight as well, but plenty of UV rays to stimulate the melanomas. Pretty hard to grow food under those conditions.
I guess given a choice, a lot of people would choose Biblical Catastrophe.
Actually we do have a choice. We could go extinct in a multiyear deep freeze or we can wait for the methane bomb to send us out in a Venusian Summer. As Woody Allen would say, choose wisely.
@Saker et @Everyone,
Lest we forget that the Syrian Electronic Army has yet to enter the fray. Then we must acknowledge that the PRC military operates with semi-autonomy outside the actual Government structure. One governs, the other protects. These 2 potential cyber-warriors will indeed strike the “west” when the time os right. No one can stop either yet independently they are unstoppable. As one can infiltrate certain targets and expose the deep state, the other can infiltrate and shut down the deep state…
@ Dacian
Only two points in that hair ball worth noting.
1. The West HAS always been an enemy of Russia. Eric Blair (George Orwell) wasn’t just predicting a future. He was projecting the past into the future.
2. Liberals are useless everywhere in the West. What reason could there be to think Russian Liberals would be any better.
Andrew,
Always you have the history and geopolitical lessons for us. Thank you.
I know from the China side of things that I study that the negotiations for development with the Chinese in these Siberian and Far East are very dicey. Russia fears the flood and aggressiveness of Han people who will populate the zones of development. But big development requires risk-taking, and the near-term is not fraught with issues. It’s later. So, too Mongolia. They are playing with the West, but are land-locked and dependent on a rail route and port at Tianjin to export their resources and goods.
The West plays with everyone everywhere, but your pinpoint digest is very helpful to make us aware and to guide further study of the developments.
Thanks again for your insights.
Saker,
What about the day after?
Who is going to pick up the tab? The US or the Germans?
Following on from this, there is an unmistakable pattern over almost 25 years that even the crazies can clearly recognize. The West can win the war, but they consistently loose the peace, their credibility and a whole can of worms that keep on giving and tying up Western resources that could be spent elsewhere.
Which leads me to the following conclusions and questions:
a) They won’t do anything unless they have thoroughly planned for the days, weeks, months and years after, and by they, I mean the generals and top brass at the sharp end who have the power and now much more will to say ‘no’ to the politicians.
b) How can they sell this to the Western public successfully and without significant political backlash by the voter if support for military action is at an all time low.
c) Military action even with the support of some members of a currently divided EU is very bad news for Europe, which despite Germany and maybe the UK, are still in serious financial straits, which leads to the next point, and a fundamental one:
d What if Germany refuses to go along with it? Relations are already bad enough with the US (so we are told), but would the US go ahead with just the UK assuming Germany will give in and pay up?
e With so many known unknowns that are in no way clearly in the West’s favor, not to mention the unknown unknowns, then it literally would be madness to intervene.
Thus, I would propose in the case of the ‘trip wire’ scenario, that Russia itself declares that it will be guarantor of the MH17 crash site and any military activity within the zone would be met with a swift and effective response(which of course means hitting the Uke army) – I call it a Reverse Bosnia where regardless of the number of times the ArBih broke cease-fires, attacked hospitals or civilians, the West did absolutely nothing, only threatening the RSA.
Such a plan allows Russia to verifiably claim that it is protecting the integrity of the crash site and is inline with all its political comments since the crash that a full international investigation should be carried out.
The facts are that the West is simply repeating over and over again the same old tired tactics and strategy and pretending the internet and people’s memories don’t exist. To probably misquote Sun Zu (which I have not read), sic ‘do not prepare to fight the next war as you have fought the last war’
RS
The role of the US dollar as world reserve currency has not prevented, indeed has greased the skids, of the descent of ZUSA into extreme societal dysfunction. The reserve currency function is important but not primary; a secondary issue.
More important is control of the composite of key financial powers and institutions: private oligopolies now have the ability to extend targeted unlimited credit. This allows for private interest financing of massive corruption and militarization and purchase of controlling interest in huge numbers of corporations, including mass media; the control or strong influence over the private Central banking system of the planet is interwoven with control over or strong influence within the IMF and the WB.
What this power has translated into has been to nearly destroy, greatly impede, a fabulous wonderful human prospect/potential. Those who think of the ‘end of industrial civilization’ as going over the edge of the cliff into the hunger games-ish or whatever nightmare scenario might consider that there has been a massive repudiation and secreting away read suppression of energy related breakthroughs and humanity empowering technological wonders by the PTB (powers that be).
What Russia now represents is the potential ‘tip of the spear’ padlock sheering – humanity’s jail breaker – enabling a leap forward reprieve/Renaissance for humanity. Once we collectively begin to tell the truth there is no stopping us. Love, logic, grace, wonders galore, are available in the wake of integrity normalized.
The key lies in institutionalizing the creation of credit and money as a transparent public utility, serving the common good, not a private secretive bankster fiefdom for the extreme advantage of the few, of the we are so special, the chosen ones, crew.
Putin and Russia are taking on the global leadership role on behalf of rule of law. Ironically, reminiscent of the upstanding, back-bone blessed old time legendary USA law abiding outlaw nemesis sheriff. Russia is now a rogue nation within an ‘international community’ disorder that has normalized pathological criminality.
Russia has shadowed every NATO exercise in the Baltic and in the Black Sea with its own military exercise. At one point an unarmed attack fighter buzzed an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Donald Cook (DDG) allegedly jamming the Aegis defense system. Do you think Russia is afraid of NATO in their own turf? With short supply chains? If Russia has not invaded is because they want to do it at the time of their choosing. In my opinion they are trying to pry Germany away from the clutches of the Atlanticists. Germany has tough choices. 30% of their Energy needs comes from Russia and 20% of their export goes to Russia. Alienating Russia leaves a big hole in GDP. The EU is dreading a default by Greece. Greece owes 1/3 of a trillion Euros. Germany has very few good options.
Poland has a score to settle with Russia. Anybody remembers the 2010 plane crash with their President and a total of 96 passengers? I am sure they blame Russia for this crash. Poland has been training Maidan operatives and sending military equipment to Ukraine and possibly mercs and snipers.
How many Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Buffets, etc. want to rule a “Mad Max” world? These are the sort of critters in charge, and they are hardly likely to allow an Obama or Netanyahu reduce them to being emperors of a bomb shelter.
вот так
@Worse than insane, they are also stupid . . . the quality of leadership in America is equally dumbed down as the general populace. Obviously no military/intelligence personnel left with enough experience, honor, common sense, etc. to stop the war.
An illustration is their belief that:
“Many in Washington expected Putin’s businessmen friends who were hit by U.S. sanctions in March to push him toward de-escalation”.
They think that the revolutionary scenario of 1916-17 would happen again. In fact Stalin put an end to the real objective of the “revolution”, the plunder of Russia through the NEP. That’s why Stalin became the blood thirsty monster. They tried it again in the ’30s with the Bukharin-Trotsky gang which, it has been proven, wanted to provoke a German-Russian conflict which would have led to an “anti-Stalinist” revolution, bringing back at the helm the gang. The war happened but did not end as desired. That’s why Stalin had to be physically eliminated (no doubt that he was murdered). Still Russia did not veered in the direction shown by the Wall Street, Bilderberg, CFR and assorted think tanks). Hence, the Cold War in expectation of its heating (“predicted” in the “Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?” of Andrei Amalrik). And then Gorbachyov and Yeltsin, the good guys. And then again the unpredictable. That explain blind fury of the West against Putin. The scenarios that should have worked failed again and maybe somewhere deep down they realize that they won’t work now either.
That would be to much to take a longer view into Russian history, but as Andrew rightly drew our attention to “the real vaue in Russia is in the geopolitical prize she won for herself at the start of the game int he 1600’s – the Urals and Siberia”. It was the demise of the slave driving Khanats of Kazan and Astrakhan and Siberia that alerted the West and started the protracted assault which ended only, temporarily, with Peter the Great (The start of the assault was the Livonian War). And all subsequent assaults (The Crimean War, 1914) were ultimately caused by the consolidation of the Russian dominion of Siberia.
Hi Saker !
You may not be interested in this, but I’m going to throw it out there anyway. Rudolf Steiner, a European mystic and sometime prophet said that Russia represents the near-future of mankind. His explanations of this are very complex and detailed…but suffice it to say that the Ango-Americans don’t want to share the future with anyone but themselves… and this really got going with Cecil Rhodes in the mid 1800’s…they want it for themselves. Therefore, their assault on Russia.
And as far as the Hebrew race goes…I think its just our silly system of Finance and Politics in an unwholesome embrace, without People having any say except through petitions …how ridiculous is that for a system ???… this has caused the problem of Zion, or Hebrews or Jews or Israel or whatever you want to call it…if Jews didn’t have the huge accumulated fortunes from the times when they were the only bankers…ie the Middle Ages…then these things would not be happening in Gaza.
The destruction of the future of mankind, which belongs for a certain time, to Russia, just as much as the time period when it belonged to Egypt, or Greece or India…this is what the Anglo-American Establishment wants to prevent….and keep it for themselves…Like the parliaments in every country now, that dictate all the decisions made in the world today is English….
So the WASPS want to finish off Russia once and for all….
And in my opinion…its really the Anti-Christ himself who directs this.
But mankind must learn how to live with the United States and its mother, England…they’re not going away anywhere….so mankind must go through this horrible hegemony until we learn how to deal with it….
http://www.anderweltonline.com/wissenschaft-und-technik/luftfahrt-2014/shocking-analysis-of-the-shooting-down-of-malaysian-mh17/
News is leaking out.
I like it when President Putin says sanctions will ‘boomerang’. When skillfully thrown the boomerang returns to the throwers hand… but when sloppily thrown comes back and hits you smack in the head!
Revelations of German Pilot: Shocking Analysis of the “Shooting Down” of Malaysian MH17. “Aircraft Was Not Hit by a Missile”
What the future brings is mainly decided by those who ‘move things’, those who act. Since 2000 the US is moved by the Neocon agenda. The jewish agenda. They destroyed the potential dangers for Israel.
But if the BRICS would kill the dollar, America will loose its power. Thus Israel will loose its power.
There comes the Samson option ( Golda Meir, Martin van Creveld). And I just read this quote about earlier times, when they did not have Israel yet and were afraid Brittain would not help them:
“Note… threats made by both Chaim Weizmann and his protégé Samuel Landman about the destruction Jews might wreak if frustrated as to Palestine. Weizmann wrote of “overthrow[ing] the world,” and Landman of “pull[ing] down the pillars of civilisation,” a metaphor obviously inspired by Judges 16:21-31.
—
But if Russia is destroyed and the USA would survive, the other BRICS will wet their pants, and Eretz Israel is still alive.
Comment part1:
Towards the end of the nineteen nineties I thought things changed. The US seemed to project a confidence that it was now untouchable. The Y2K charade tested out the global propaganda machine while making huge profits for Bill Gates and Silicon Valley. A slick win-win.
The war machine installed George W Bush in 2000 through electoral fraud and the stacked Supreme Court. All in place for the big one, September 11, 2001.
George W, said ‘you are either with us or against us’. Not an idle threat from a simpleton caught up in his own hubris, but a clear statement of fact. There can be no doubt that the intelligence agencies of all modern countries are well aware that 9/11was a false flag. Anyone who has swallowed the red pill could see immediately that the official story was a crock of BS; the War on Terror a license to go forth and conquer, enabled by the false narrative.
The work of many truth seekers, professionals and others, has clearly established that the WTC towers were brought down in a controlled demolition with use of explosives already in place in the buildings. Yet the official narrative holds, a truly impressive display of the power and reach of the global propaganda machine. When I raise the subject of 9/11 with intelligent friends and acquaintances, I continue to be struck by the avoidance of most to even looking at the evidence. I’m so far down the rabbit hole that I have forgotten that one needs to rearrange reality to accept the evidence. Goebbels classic ‘Big Lie’, which is too hard to accept, so an offered narrative from trusted sources is adopted, invested in and defended.
I’m in no doubt however, that our intelligence agencies and government advisers do not allow themselves the luxury of fairy tales. I keep waiting for a Western nation to crack, to say no to the latest regime change, the latest atrocity against a new civilian population. But no-one does. I ask
myself; ‘What big stick can the US be holding over everyone to engender this complicity in savagery? Mere economic favouritism or bribery doesn’t seem enough.’
Our Prime Minister in 2001 was John Howard. He was in New York on September 11th, 2001. Howard was visibly shaken on 9/11, but like Tony Blair, a competent spin-Meister and spokesman for the Empire in prosecuting the War on Terror. In the lead up to the Iraq ‘shock and awe campaign’, Howard was a key agent in the coalition of the willing, and increasingly under pressure domestically from anti-war protesters at home and abroad. In the one-time I recognised Howard being truthful he appeared on television and apologetically told the nation he was doing this ‘in the national interest’.
How could this be in the national interest I wondered? The reasons offered by Howard didn’t seem enough. It could only be in the national interest if the ultimate cost of not being ‘with US’ as Bush advised, was too high to pay.
Since Iraq, we have had the obscenity of Libya and the ongoing destruction of Syria. Through all the lies and machinations of those tragedies, the western allies have stayed on song, often to their limited or negative advantage.
It looked to me in 1998 that the US had adopted the PNAC (Project for a New American Century) and the Wolfowitz Doctine and was going for world control, believing it now had the capability to prevail against all comers. September 11th declared war and rallied the troops. I have struggled to find some cause for hope in the utterances of objector leaders of nations. But each new focus of the war reinforces the original insight.
Comment part 2:
In keeping with looking at a duck, this is how it looks to me. The US is pursuing a disciplined, focussed and strategic end game, which has been playing out all this century. It is playing for keeps. Mass murder is on the table and has no limits. The scenario has been laid out to western nations and they have made a terrible choice. The basic program was Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran, then the hard nuts, Russia and China. Russia has thwarted the US on Iran and Syria and needs to be dealt with now. Only Russia and China stand in the way of global control.
The war on Russia swung into operation with the coup and the media propaganda machine ramped up with Crimea. MH17 was a US false flag, but unlike 9/11 was very unprofessional and unplanned. Despite the propaganda machine going into overdrive, the MH17 deception will not stand for long as a propaganda narrative but does not need to, as the war will progress quickly. The US believes that it will have enough standing after a nuclear exchange and first strike and it is the necessary and viable option. Paul Craig Roberts posited a false flag in the US with the possible destruction of a US city as a trigger for first strike. An activation of domestic control of the US population would be concurrent, with the use of the concentration camps built across the US during the Bush regime. This is believable.
Most of the public have taken the self protective path of believing the 9/11 lie. Our public narrative is that of the mentally ill; our society ceding control to the madmen working with purpose to create our destiny. Our leaders have entered into some Faustian bargain hoping to still be at the table of plenty, no matter how diminished in the soul and in substance.
I hope I’m wrong. The MH17 black boxes have not surfaced as evidence. What is being said behind the scenes by the Dutch, Malaysians and my own Australian reps? The Dutch lost 154 of their people – surely they will speak openly. On past performance no; they will toe the line. Do I detect a note of exasperation from our current quisling PM, Tony Abbott. He basically said ‘F*** the sanctions. We have bodies in a Ukrainian field to deal with’ when asked about the latest sanctions on Russia. I keep looking for some sign or revolution amongst the ranks, some expression of decency, calling bloody murder for what it is. Naming the US barbarians for what they are. Surely the Europeans realise that Europe would again be theatre of war; would be decimated in a nuclear exchange. Yet they seem helpless to help themselves.
To paraphrase a Buddhist text: ‘ Truth awaits the birth of courage’.
And still the ducks swim in their maddening circles.
Well, Saker, I just don’t know about your analysis. Even I know the US can’t fight, and the weaponry is no good anymore. And as I’ve learned in these comments, Europe won’t fight Russia.
I expect terrible false flags, and these are tricky things, could go either way in terms of who ends up with moral high ground. But treachery is the only US weapon, and after boomerang sanctions and no credible military capacity, there’s nothing left.
As people here suggest, I too suspect the “madness” is a useful “bad cop” side of the US, allowed to flourish for its demoralizing effect on opponents.
And we have to remember that the very rational ambitions of the US are geared towards “insane” results. It’s all about asset-stripping, following Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine. And for this you need a society destabilized. In this sense the condition of Ukraine right shows a clear profit. It’s already paid far more than it cost to achieve this. The gold is gone, the IMF fangs are sunk in, the puppets are in place. Initial failures to persuade the parliament to sell off the pipeline failed, stronger moves towards dictatorship now follow.
Efforts to do away with national laws, parliaments and other impediments will continue, because what remains is a whole nation still to plunder. And as long as it costs less to do this than the profit obtained from asset-stripping, the USS will continue with its “madness”.
I don’t mean to sound flippant about this, or disconnected from the concerns here. I think what happens in Ukraine is mostly a case of how Russia decides to deal with it. I have total trust in Russia to do the best thing for Russians first and then the world next. And the outcomes will result from mostly military actions, for sure.
But the US position is as simple as Michael Corleone saying, “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.” I think Putin understands this also. His general task, one could argue, is to make the cost for the US prohibitively high.
It’s a good tactic though to make the World think the US government have lost the plot real or otherwise to put the fear of bejazus into everyone…. mind you if you follow Brzezinski’s line of thought, then you ought to be bricking it……
Nabil2020 said… That is unless God Himself intervenes, such as a devastating Biblical catastrophe, the Yellowstone Super Volcano erupting and taking down most of the US. —
Curiously, that thought has floated independently thru my mind also.
Also, thre has been this story going round lately that, during the Cuban missile crisis, the Russian sub commander blinked instead of launching nukes as ordered.
This story is really problematic for the US psyche and the ramifications are serious.
I’ll take n. 3, with a variant. The demarcation line does not run along the borders of Novorossija but along the old Ukrainian one. Militia, without substantial help from Russia in men and materel – notice, I don’t say overt, I say substantial – fights a great retreat, inflicts heavy losses (who matter to noone, as it’s all expendable cannon fodder) and is finally pushed across the Russian border. Behind it, it remains an impending menace to “European, Atlantic and democratic Ukraine”.
Now that the West has proven how efficient it is, and Putin has his trouble at home for not protectingg Novorossija, the “protectors” go to Ukraine to stay, and thence ignite as many possible orange manipulations in Russia.
Only, just don’t downplay Europeans too much. Major Nations all have scarce but efficient elite units, which are perfect for such a scenario, and will be rapidly sent to the spot (Italy even offered “peacekeepers” long ago!). So, whatever happens, the whole EU bs will be outraged.
Rockerduck
“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe” [A. Einstein].
Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it and history is largely repeating only now it is occurring in a nuclear era. In addition to the economic situation (gradual structural failure of a debt based economic system due to increasingly unserviceable levels of debt, vast toxic assets created by fraudulent financial instruments, distortion of asset values due to speculation, conversion of financial markets into gambling casinos, increasing imbalances, etc.), the militarism of another bloc is globally expanding. In addition to the many lower intensity conflicts that are globally expanding, larger conflicts (involving members of nuclear armed blocs) are approaching.
Unfortunately it is likely that a world war is gradually unfolding before us. The U.S./NATO/Israel project of global hegemony through militarism (successive wars/proxy wars, involving globally expanding operations) will not cease. The eventual outcome is therefore logical and largely predictable.
Just as no nation wanted the first world war or the second world war, similarly the horror of the third world war will likely be unplanned. As computer simulations indicate that mutually assured destruction is almost unavoidable as a result of a nuclear war event, the probable coming horror will likely result from desperation rather than calculation.
Importantly, operations of this bloc against Russia are active and expanding (covert/ proxy war/, mobilisation of military forces/assets/missile architecture, information warfare, economic warfare/sanctions/economic sabotage operations, destabilisation/ partition/ regime change operations within Russia, etc.). After E Ukraine, Crimea (and Transnistria) will almost certainly also be targeted. What is occurring is more than a cold war but not yet a direct hot war.
p2. Much is not understood about the physics of space-time. While concepts and theories are still being debated, there is evidence that the dimension of time is not merely linear. For example, although much of parapsychology is based in fraud, the ability of some to attain knowledge of future events (not merely educated guesses but accurate/detailed predictions) is evidence of dimensional architecture and forces still beyond our knowledge and comprehension.
Similarly, events that are unfolding are consistent with prophecy. If such prophecy is fulfilled, a great horror will occur in the near future that will claim much of humanity.
“Two or three decades after the first war it will come one a Second War still larger. Almost all the nations of the world will be involved. Millions of men will die, without being soldiers. The fire will fall from the sky and many great cities will be destroyed. And after the end of the Second Great War, a third universal conflagration will come, so that it will determine everything. There will be weapons totally new. In one day, more men will die than in all the previous wars. The battles will be accomplished with artificial weapons. Gigantic catastrophes will happen. With the open eyes, the nations of the planet will go through these catastrophes. They won’t know what is happening, and those that know and tell, will be silenced. Everything will be different from before, and in many places the Earth will be a great cemetery. [Stormberger]
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. … corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” [Abraham Lincoln, Nov 21, 1864]
Other similar (and some more detailed) prophecies exist.
p3. Although prophecy is an interesting concept (subject to belief or disbelief) and not based in science (other than possible physics /dimensions of space-time), it is worth observing that the concept of 3 world wars is a common feature of prophecy. But if proven accurate, importantly a nuclear war event does not translate to human extinction. But it is a horror that if it occurs will eclipse all wars in history (it is survivable but for some time the survivors will experience hardship. Many would die of disease, famine or the resultant violent anarchy).
Regardless of belief or disbelief (which will not change the reality of what is occurring or probable approaching events), it is still likely that this era of corruption, exploitation and greed (that is gradually progressing towards neo-feudalism of plutocratic governments facilitating the transfer of public wealth to private interests resulting in the creation of a class of extreme wealth/ oligarchs/ historically lords exploiting labour/ historically serfs) is coming to an end. If world war was not to intercede, a collapse of the current economic system (based and dependent on debt expansion/perpetual growth however resulting in unserviceable levels of debt overwhelming many economies, increasing imbalances, the distortion of asset values due to speculation, vast fraudulent debts/toxic assets, etc.) would occur.
But if this era ends (as possibly revealed through prophecy), a new era will then arrive.
In the meantime, so long as the Anglo-Zionists and their collaborators remain able to, they will continue to agitate, destabilise, infiltrate and subjugate (embracing war as a mechanism to achieve their objectives) in their pursuit of power and profit. For peace and stability to be established, their ability to agitate must be ended. Indeed, if I am correct, their abominations and horrors will in time come back on them. Similarly, it is likely that in time these many globally expanding wars (many a result of operations by the U.S./NATO/Israel bloc) will be recognised as one.
Whether I am correct or not, it is respectfully advisable to prepare for this possible (arguably probable) outcome. I hope that I am wrong.
The hapless uncle Tom of the White house, Barrack Banana lost one such chicken race in Syria.
Hell-bent on invading, but Russia gathered an impressive armada and China got involved too, israel tried to kick start an attack but NATO´s Foggy Ratmussen eventually withdrew his fleet beyond Chrete. Then the chemical thing and the US and the horse faced Kerry/Kohn where humiliatingly defeated. That may have pushed Barrack Banana´s white Zionazi masters over the edge of their insanity to give it another try.
Evidently, this hysterical Putin-bashing campaign in Zionist western corporate media has gone too far,ridiculously so, it´s too obvious and in the age of internet, i think it will backfire. But yes at this stage, before saner voices are getting heard (and MSM space) it seems we are Zombie sleep-walking into something i havn´t felt since the 80´s…
Mikhas.
“news that the Ukies did it”
the news may well be that the resistance did it (see current _Economist_), and those who are now ignoring the evidence assembled by e.g. niqnaq will appear discredited and unprepared to show the deeper sense in which the West is responsible (e.g. by rerouting the airplane and making it descend, confiscating & possibly doctoring ATC and black box records)
as for questioning motives, your accusations (#3) are consistent w. Fyodorov’s (psyop?) argument that critics of Putin’s surrender of Novorossiya are a 6th column; Sophocles is the locus classicus
for the accusation that Tiresias who speaks the truth must be on the take since the king doesn’t want to hear it
I think the risk is all too real.
With the press in the Western world speaking with one voice the bulk of the people are now brainwashed into thinking and believing along the lines the authorities want. This has not happened before, we used to have investigative and brave journalists, no more.
This will creep forward one step at a time.
What it needs is a ‘killer’ blow. By that I mean something so big that will make the US realise that it can’t win.
As China must realise that once the US has ‘picked off’ Russia they will be next. The obvious strategy would be that the BRICS countries announce their ‘Article 5’, an attack on one is an attack on all.
If the US then decides that it can take on the might of Russia and China, on two fronts, at the same time, God help us all. But at least it is a way out.