Tag: history

NATO’s Sicilian Expedition

Russian generals and military analysts increasingly betray open disdain for the incompetence of their Western counterparts. Even the ever-wary Putin, despite his habitual caution and openness to negotiation, radiates a distinct contempt for the enemies of Russia, perhaps in part due to his anticipation of them reliably choosing suboptimal courses.

And lest one think that the Russians are simply striking poses in order to put themselves in a better negotiating position, consider the insane new British plan to do just that as reported yesterday by RIA Novosti. Autotranslated from the Russian:

MOSCOW, Feb 2 — RIA Novosti. Great Britain invited NATO allies to consider sending an alliance expeditionary force to Ukraine, an informed source told RIA Novosti.

“In connection with the unfavorable development of events for Kiev at the Ukrainian theater of operations (TVD), Britain invited NATO allies to consider sending an alliance expeditionary force to Ukraine, as well as establishing a no-fly zone over the territory controlled by the Kiev authorities and increasing the supply of weapons and equipment VSU”, — said the agency interlocutor.

Nevertheless, the British side expects that with a significant weakening of the Armed Forces and the successful advancement of the Russian army deep into the territory of the former Soviet republic, the Allies will approve the initiative, the source noted. He specified that the kingdom offers to secretly transfer to Ukraine large highly maneuverable NATO forces from the border regions of Romania and Poland for the occupation of defensive lines on the right bank of the Dnieper.

In addition, the British plan involves the deployment in Norway and Finland of a contingent of the alliance and armies of individual members of the organization to “spray” the forces and means of the Russian troops, he said. “At the same time, attacks can be made on strategic infrastructure facilities in the northern regions of Russia,” — the source emphasized.

Then, according to him, the NATO military will create a buffer zone within the occupied positions, including the border with Belarus and the territory around Kiev, and the released reserves of the Armed Forces will be sent to the special operation zone. Thus, according to London, NATO will supposedly be able to undermine Russia’s offensive capabilities and Russia will have to negotiate, he said.

Britain intends to complete the preparation of such a scenario by May of this year, the source of the agency summarized.

London proposed to send NATO expeditionary force to Ukraine, RIA NOVOSTI, 2 February 2024

The last time Britain organized an expeditionary force against Russia, it did not go well. Very few in the West now recall the North Russian Intervention, which involved 32,000 British, French, and US troops being sent to Archangel for a year-and-a-half. But the Russians assuredly have not forgotten it. From Infogalactic:

The North Russia intervention, also known as the Northern Russian expedition, the Archangel campaign, and the Murman deployment, was part of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War after the October Revolution. The intervention brought about the involvement of foreign troops in the Russian Civil War on the side of the White movement. The movement was ultimately defeated, while the British-led Allied forces withdrew from Northern Russia after fighting a number of defensive actions against the Bolsheviks, such as the Battle of Bolshie Ozerki. The campaign lasted from March 1918, during the final months of World War I, to October 1919.

Presumably, the USA is behind this latest British brainstorm, just as it was behind the decision of the Kiev regime to fight a proxy war for NATO instead of surrendering in April 2022 at the behest of then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. But perhaps the neoclowns should focus on winning their latest war in Yemen and defeating that formidable military power before setting up to lose on yet another front in Ukraine.

Although it would be historically fitting if NATO were to end with its own Sicilian Expedition.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Russian Art of War

A new book by a French colonel explains the difference between Western and Russian military thought, and how the superiority of the latter is why the former loses its wars:

Throughout the Cold War period, the Soviet Union saw itself as the spearhead of a historical struggle that would lead to a confrontation between the “capitalist” system and “progressive forces.” This perception of a permanent and inescapable war led the Soviets to study war in a quasi-scientific way, and to structure this thinking into an architecture of military thought that has no equal in the Western world.

The problem with the vast majority of our so-called military experts is their inability to understand the Russian approach to war. It is the result of an approach we have already seen in waves of terrorist attacks—the adversary is so stupidly demonized that we refrain from understanding his way of thinking. As a result, we are unable to develop strategies, articulate our forces, or even equip them for the realities of war. The corollary of this approach is that our frustrations are translated by unscrupulous media into a narrative that feeds hatred and increases our vulnerability. We are thus unable to find rational, effective solutions to the problem.

The way Russians understand conflict is holistic. In other words, they see the processes that develop and lead to the situation at any given moment. This explains why Vladimir Putin’s speeches invariably include a return to history. In the West, we tend to focus on X moment and try to see how it might evolve. We want an immediate response to the situation we see today. The idea that “from the understanding of how the crisis arose comes the way to resolve it” is totally foreign to the West. In September 2023, an English-speaking journalist even pulled out the “duck test” for me: “if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.” In other words, all the West needs to assess a situation is an image that fits their prejudices. Reality is much more subtle than the duck model….

The reason the Russians are better than the West in Ukraine is that they see the conflict as a process; whereas we see it as a series of separate actions. The Russians see events as a film. We see them as photographs. They see the forest, while we focus on the trees. That is why we place the start of the conflict on February 24, 2022, or the start of the Palestinian conflict on October 7, 2023. We ignore the contexts that bother us and wage conflicts we do not understand. That is why we lose our wars…

In Russia, unsurprisingly, the principles of the military art of the Soviet forces inspired those currently in use:

  • readiness to carry out assigned missions;
  • concentration of efforts on solving a specific mission;
  • surprise (unconventionality) of military action vis-à-vis the enemy;
  • finality determines a set of tasks and the level of resolution of each one;
  • totality of available means determines the way to resolve the mission and achieve the objective (correlation of forces);
  • coherence of leadership (unity of command);
  • economy of forces, resources, time and space;
  • support and restoration of combat capability;
  • freedom of maneuver.
  • It should be noted that these principles apply not only to the implementation of military action as such. They are also applicable as a system of thought to other non-operational activities.

An honest analysis of the conflict in Ukraine would have identified these various principles and drawn useful conclusions for Ukraine. But none of the self-proclaimed experts on TV were intellectually able to do so.

Thus, Westerners are systematically surprised by the Russians in the fields of technology (e.g., hypersonic weapons), doctrine (e.g., operative art) and economics (e.g., resilience to sanctions). In a way, the Russians are taking advantage of our prejudices to exploit the principle of surprise. We can see this in the Ukrainian conflict, where the Western narrative led Ukraine to totally underestimate Russian capabilities, which was a major factor in its defeat. That is why Russia did not really try to counter this narrative and let it play out—the belief that we are superior makes us vulnerable….

This is very, very similar to what Martyanov describes in the current Castalia Library book, Losing Military Supremacy. Which should come as no surprise, as both men are familiar with Russian military thought and how different it is than what Victor Davis Hanson once described as the Western way of war. The short term thinking of the Western military strategists can most easily be seen in their historical obsession with “the decisive battle” and strange focus on the idea that losing a battle or two, or even denying him a sufficiently impressive victory, will somehow weaken the enemy leader and magically cause him to be replaced by a more amenable successor.

Which is why the Russians are patiently winning a brutal attrition war in Ukraine while the US bleeds itself out everywhere from Afghanistan to Yemen.

DISCUSS ON SG

Identity > Ideology

Lee Kuan Yew’s doctrine is more important than all the ideologies and isms in history combined. Because no one actually believes in any of them, they simply use them for the advancement of their races and religions. Identity is even sufficient to transform a diehard, life-long libertarian and Austrian economist into a full-blown collectivist, as evidenced by Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s criticism of Walter Block’s libertarian case for Israel:

Block et. al., in their attempt of presenting the liberal respectively libertarian case for Israel, maintain that they can justify the claim of present-day Jews to a homeland in Palestine based on their status as “heirs” of Jews having lived two millennia ago in the region then called Judea. Not surprisingly, however, except for the single and in itself highly questionable case of the Kohanim (Jews of priestly descent) and their specific connection to the Temple Mount, they do not provide a shred of evidence how in the world any one specific present-day Jew, through a time-span of more than two thousand years, can be connected to any one specific ancient Jew and be established as legitimate heir of some specific piece of property stolen or otherwise taken from him two thousand years ago.

The claim of present-day Jews to a homeland in Palestine, then, can only be made if you abandon the methodological individualism underlying and characteristic of all libertarian thought: the notion of individual personhood, of private property, private product and accomplishment, private crime and private guilt. Instead, you must adopt some form of collectivism that allows for such notions as group or tribal property and property rights, collective responsibility and collective guilt.

This turn from an individualistic to a collectivistic perspective is on clear display in Block’s et. al. summary conclusion (p.537):

“Rothbard supports homesteading as the legitimate means of ownership (the first homesteader gets the land, not any subsequent one)….Libertarians deduce from this fact that stolen property must be returned to its original owners, or their heirs. This is the case for reparations. Well, the Romans stole the land from the Jews around two millennia ago; the Jews never gave this land to the Arabs or anyone else. Thus according to libertarian theory it should be returned to the Jews.”

Bingo. But homesteading is done by some specific Ben or Nate, not by “the Jews,” and likewise reparations for crimes committed against Ben or Nate are owed to some specific David or Moshe as their heir, not to “the Jews,” and they concern specific pieces of property, not all of “Israel.” Unable to find any present David or Moshe that can be identified as ancient Ben’s or Nate’s heir to some specified piece of property, however, all reparation claims directed against any current owner are without any base.

Another property theory is needed to still make the case for a Jewish homeland. And Block and his coauthors offer such a theory: property rights and reparation claims can allegedly also be justified by genetic and cultural similarity… Whatever these outpourings of Block’s are, they have nothing whatsoever to do with libertarianism. In fact, to advocate the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents is the total and complete negation of libertarianism and the non-aggression principle. The Murray Rothbard I knew would have immediately called them out as unhinged, monstrous, unconscionable and sickening and publicly ridiculed, denounced, “unfriended” and excommunicated Block as a Rothbardian.

First, setting aside the burning question of what is, and what is not, Rothbardian, I always find the historic Jewish claim to the land of Israel on the basis of previous ownership to be incredibly bizarre, given that in the very document upon which they base that claim, it is established a) the Habiru stole the land from the Canaanites and b) most of it didn’t belong to them anyhow, but to one of the other tribes. How would property that Simeon stole from Joe Canaan, which was then stolen by Assyrians and later stolen by Romans, then Arabs, and finally the British, before being stolen by European Jews somehow properly belong to a genetic heir of Judah?

But that’s just an observation that is literally the exact opposite of new. What’s much more interesting here is the way that Block’s argument relying upon the transformation of the ideological core of libertarianism into a form of ethnic collectivism not only proves Lee’s doctrine of identity, but even shows how predictive that doctrine can be. For the record, I had never read anything by Block nor did I know anything about his background prior to reading Hoppe’s article today

Walter Block was born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish parents Abraham Block, a certified public accountant, and Ruth Block, a paralegal, both of whom Block has said were liberals. He attended James Madison High School, where Bernie Sanders was on his track team. Block earned his Ph.D. degree in economics from Columbia University and wrote his dissertation on rent control in the United States under Gary Becker. Block identifies himself as a “devout atheist”.

Show me your argument and you show me your identity.

Because, as the greatest political mind of the 20th Century once wrote: “In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.”

That’s why I no longer describe myself as a libertarian. Not simply because I have rejected the ideology, although I have, but because I no longer believe that most ideologists, past or present, are even remotely interested in, much less connected to, truth and objective reality. Despite its grandiose and universalist pretensions, ideology is the detailed rationalization of an identity group’s immediate interests, and it will always be subject to further modification and mutation as that group’s interests change over time.

DISCUSS ON SG

Great Replacement Reality

It’s already apparent that GabAI is much more accurate than the mainstream AI systems. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily reliable. I found it interesting that I’m supposed to be known for my belief in what is described as “Great Replacement” theory, when in fact I’m much better known for coining the related and more widely utilized term “Magic Dirt”. Which, of course, is not to say that I don’t believe in the reality of what is quite obviously taking place all across the West, from Australia to Portugal.

Vox Day, also known as Theodore Beale, is a prominent figure in the far-right nationalist movement. He is a science fiction author, blogger, and editor who has made a name for himself as a prolific commentator on issues like race, culture, and politics. Day is well-known for his belief in the “Great Replacement” theory, which claims that there is a deliberate effort to replace white populations in Western countries with non-white immigrants.

In his book “The Inevitable Victory of the Far Right,” Day argues that the far-right is on the rise and will eventually triumph over its opponents. He believes that nationalism and traditional values are essential for the survival of Western civilization, and that immigration and multiculturalism pose an existential threat to these values.

Setting aside that I’ve never written a book called “The Inevitable Victory of the Far Right,” I’m observably in excellent company with Julius Caesar and the ancient Helveti, among others, if not so much with the EU-corrupted politicians who falsely claim that the so-called “Great Replacement” is some sort of “theory” rather than an observable mass-migration policy based on their faith in their Magic Dirt theory, which is predicated on the belief that foreigners who migrate en masse to new lands will adopt the beliefs, customs and traditions of the previous inhabitants and will magically become indistinguishable from them, in contradiction to the entire written record of human history.

Here is one illustrative example from the Cambridge Medieval History, Volume I:

About the year B.C. 71, on the invitation of the powerful tribe of the Sequani, Ariovistus chief of the Suebi crossed the Rhine with 15,000 warriors to serve as mercenaries to the Sequani against their neighbours the Aedui. But after the victory was won, the strangers did not return to their own land but remained on the western side of the Rhine and established themselves in the territory of their employers, taking possession of about a third of it. Strengthened by large accessions from the homeland this Germanic settlement on Gaulish territory soon became a menace to all the surrounding tribes.

None dared to oppose the conquerors, who already regarded the whole of Gaul as their prey. They pursued their work deliberately and systematically, constantly bringing in new swarms of their compatriots and assigning them lands in the territories which they had subjugated. Thus the power of Ariovistus became very formidable. The establishment of a great Germanic Empire over the whole of Gaul seemed not far distant.

This was the condition of affairs when Caesar (B.C 58) took up his command in Gaul. He was well aware of the danger to the Roman occupation which lay in these wholesale immigrations of Germanic hordes into Gaulish territory, and it was consequently his first care to take prompt measures to meet the Teutonic peril. It is well known how he performed this task, how he removed the haunting dread of a general irruption of the Germanic peoples into Keltic territory, and at the same time established security and order upon the Rhine frontier. The restoration of the conquered Helveti to their abandoned territory in order that they might continue to serve, but now in the Roman interest, as a buffer-state, secured Gaul, and especially the valley of the Rhone, against incursions from, the direction of the upper Rhine.

There is no Great Replacement “theory”. It is simply a description of something that has literally been taking place since 1965 at the absolute latest.

DISCUSS ON SG

No Boots for the Ground

Simplicius explains why a US invasion of Iran is unlikely even in the event of an Iran-Israeli war:

Don’t even bother thinking about boots on the ground, if such a thing was possible it would take a year or more of preparation. Remember the Iraq invasion required 6 months just of transporting materiel and assets to the region, staging them, etc. But Iran wouldn’t let you stage them because it has far more sophisticated modern ballistic systems than anything Iraq had, which means large troop concentrations and armor/materiel staging areas could be hit and wiped out long before zero hour. Don’t believe me? Just watch the video at the beginning, the US army general says it himself toward the end: he states the accuracy of Iran’s ballistic missiles was shocking and they hit “pretty much everything they wanted to hit.”

So ground invasion is out—that’s not happening. The only thing they could possibly attempt is a long-spanning aerial campaign. But to even remotely scratch Iran’s capabilities would require a vast campaign lasting minimum 6-12 months and probably much longer. Remember, all of NATO mustered for 3 months against little Serbia with 6 million people and barely managed to destroy anything of worth. Iran has a 90 million population and a country probably a hundred times the size of Serbia, not to mention a far larger military. How long do you think it would take NATO to even put a dent in that from only an aerial campaign?

In short: it would take years, and during those years, Iran would shut down every major maritime and economic chokepoint in the region, crashing the global economy. If you thought a few ships being hit now was bad, wait til you see the nominal Iranian forces rather than Houthis hitting everything in sight—it won’t be pretty. And I’ve beaten the point before about how difficult it would be to even find targets in the decentralized vastness of Iran, just like in Yemen.

Furthermore, the US military can’t afford the necessary troop commitment for an invasion. The US Army doesn’t even have enough troops to confront Russia directly without withdrawing from most of its bases all over the world, assuming that the Russians permitted the delivery of hundreds of thousands of US soldiers to Europe in the first place.

Desert Storm required 950,000 soldiers, 3100 tanks, 2200 artillery, and 1800 aircraft back in 1991. The US Army currently has 452,689 on active duty, plus 180,958 Marines, and none of its NATO allies now have more than a handful of troops, most of whom have no equipment or ammunition anymore in the aftermath of NATO’s proxy defeat in Ukraine.

At this point, a real war with either Russia or Iran would not only lead to the loss of Taiwan, it might also lead to the loss of Texas. Which means that an ineffective “air war” is about the most that the USA can use to aid Israel, and even that might be too risky now that Russia has anti-air assets in the region securing Syrian airspace.

The neoclowns are agitating furiously for war in the Middle East, and later today I will post some extremely esoteric reasons why the Netanyahu administration might even deliver them one despite the USA’s limited ability to engage in one, but from a strictly military perspective, it is hard to imagine even the most deluded Clown World puppeteer deciding it is time to have the Fake Biden administration order a ground war anywhere outside of the current US borders. But as their time appears to be running out, we cannot dismiss the possibility of a desperate decision to roll the dice while they still have the influence required to do so. They did with the Ukraine counter-offensive that was always doomed from the start, and it’s not as if they are any less indifferent to American lives than to Ukrainian lives.

DISCUSS ON SG

Battlegames

Spent the day wargaming with some professional types. Smart, very well-informed guys. Gave a brief presentation, listened to some longer, more detailed, and much more impressive ones. Reached three conclusions:

  1. Blitzkrieg is not a strategy, much less a doctrine.
  2. Hoping that the leader of the other side is a) the sole reason for the war, and, b) he will vanish as soon as the other side faces a setback is not a strategy. Not a viable one, anyhow.
  3. Wargame is a misnomer. Very, very few wargames actually involve the primary elements of war. They’re battlegames.

DISCUSS ON SG

Gazacaust!=Holocaust

“A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth—some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.”
— Michael Kinsley

I would like to use the rest of my time to describe how appalled I am that people are bringing up the Holocaust. Do not use other genocides to describe this one! I have been… oh!

Oops! That’s not so much letting the cat out of the bag, as a sabretooth tiger. Must be that vaunted 115 IQ, operating at levels far beyond our meager powers of comprehension.

But in all fairness, a potential Gazacaust can’t really be legitimately compared to the historical Holocaust. No roller coasters, no gas chambers, no eagles, no bears, and no bizarre medical experiments. Just bullets, bombs, and bulldozers.

What’s fascinating about the current situation is the way in which the invasion of Gaza is, rightly or wrongly, justified by an answer to the very question that isn’t even allowed to be publicly asked about the Holocaust.

Precisely what did the victims do that inspired this genocidal impulse on the part of their victimizers?

DISCUSS ON SG

Alan Moore, Unreliable Narrator

The Dark Herald busts Alan Moore’s false claims about the creation of his iconic character, Rorshach.

In 1983, Time Warner bought up the Action Heroes of venerable old 3rd place runner-up Charleton Comics. This was supposedly a “gift” to Dick Giordano who was the managing editor of DC and had been an editor at Charleton for a number of years. As unbelievable luck would have it this “gift” tied up a lot of long-standing rights issues, where frankly, DC wasn’t the good guy. It was right around that time that Marvel’s Captain Marvel took suddenly dead. Why yes, Charleton was indeed the original rights holder on Captain Marvel. Why do you ask?

The reason I bring this is up is that Rorschach was not an original character, he sure as hell wasn’t based on Batman, and Alan Moore had nothing to do with his creation.

Rorsach was originally based on The Question. Moore was using all deconstructed versions of all the Charlton Action Heroes to tell his long winded What If story.

As you can see when Giordano finally got around to asking his hairy boy wonder, ‘What the fuck are you doing to the characters we just bought?” Moore’s top to bottom redesign involved putting blotches all over The Question’s face.

Genius.

The Question was created in the late sixties by the legendary Steve Ditko who was based on his previous character Mister A.

“Mr. A was inspired by Objectivism, the belief system and moral absolutism of the philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand. Ditko has been quoted as saying that his creation The Question was intended as a version of Mr. A that would be acceptable to the Comics Code Authority.”

The lefty as hell Alan Moore would have known all about where The Question came from. The obsessed objectivist who asked questions that shouldn’t be asked can come across as a conspiracy nutcase, depending on the circumstances. And that was the aspect of the character that Moore leached on to. He set to work dragging Ditko’s right-wing creation through the slime as a dysfunctional conspiracy nutcase, hobo who couldn’t remember to bathe. 

That being said, we’ll always have Moore to thank for this meme.

DISCUSS ON SG

Disintegration

One of the reasons I selected Martyanov’s book on military supremacy for the Library series is that he’s considerably more perceptive than the average geopolitical observer. I’ve been reading his book on the ongoing breakup of the United States, and it was intriguing to see that he’s one of the few observers who understands that the USA is not, and has never been, a genuine nation.

Some quotes from his book Disintegration:

  • America’s collapse has been in the progress for some time now, and has been predicted by a number of observers—but in actuality the utter, historically unprecedented degeneration of America’s so-called elites, which have exhibited a level of malfeasance, incompetence, cowardice and betrayal of their own people on such a scale that it beggars belief. 
  • For the United States to survive as a unified country, a completely new narrative, grounded in reality, is required and the current American policy elites, be they purportedly left radicals and those forces which support them or the nominally conservative, no less grossly indoctrinated forces on the right, are utterly incapable of formulating the real American national interests, or of creating a new narrative, because the United States is in the process of the fragmentation of what used to be an American proto-nation, but ultimately never fully turned into the real thing. Political creeds, or abstract, often utterly wrong ideas are simply not enough to inspire and, most importantly, to sustain the growth of a nation. The modern American elites and their European followers have proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
  • Today neither France nor the United States are nations in a full meaning of this word, with France descending into the chaos of globalist multicultural orthodoxy, while the United States is completely subverted by ethno-religious and corporate interests.
  • Today, the United States is not a nation, certainly not in the traditional sense of having a dominant ethnic nationality, while the foundational American meme and myth of a “Melting Pot” has turned out to be exactly that—a myth. America’s many ethnicities have not been assimilated to form a single nation, but rather are more aptly regarded as a salad bowl comprised of descendants of the majority “white” European settlers and the “colored” (Native American, African American, and Latin and Asian immigrant) minorities, all maintaining to varying degrees their original cultural identities. But even the salad bowl analogy is too weak to reflect the multicultural disaster the United States has become.

Martyanov clearly sees what generations of Americans, blinded by relentless civnattery and immigrant propaganda, and generations of immigrants, averting their eyes from the historical facts that make them feel uncomfortable or left out, cannot. It is this ability to be ruthlessly objective about the world as it is, rather than the world we are told it is, or the world we wish it would be, that makes his insights and observations valuable.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Decline is Observable

It’s rapidly becoming readily apparent to everyone, not just me, Wang Hunin, Simplicius, and Andrei Martyanov, that the decline of the imperial United States is both a) inevitable and b) observable.

The best indicator of real GDP per capita is energy usage per capita, because everything about a comfortable modern lifestyle takes a lot of energy, energy comes into everything people do and consume. This was rising exponentially to 1972, when the rise suddenly halted. It then started fall, slowly. And suddenly it has now started to fall rather more quickly and dramatically. It looks like three trend regimes: Exponential growth starting in the seventeenth century, then stagnation and slow decline starting in 1972, and now it looks like the beginning of dramatic collapse, looks like the beginning of a sharp break in the trend of slow and gentle decline.

This reflects a regime ever more hostile to the men who made it great, to the faith that made it great, the culture that made it great, and race that made it great.

Notice that no matter what metric is used, 1972-1973 keeps appearing as the high water mark for the USA. That’s not an accident. 1972 was, from an economic, industrial, and demographic perspective, the moment of Peak America.

Everything since then has been nothing but decline disguised by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

DISCUSS ON SG