The Rude Awakening

Victoria Nuland and her fellow neoclowns were not prepared for Russia to defeat NATO, for the rise of BRICS, or for the second great wave of anticolonial revolutions in Africa:

When US Acting Deputy Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, traveled to South Africa on July 29, her reputation as a blunt instrument of Washington’s hegemonic interests preceded her.

According to a veteran South African official who attended meetings with the senior US diplomat in Pretoria, however, Nuland and her team were demonstrably unprepared to grapple with recent developments on the African continent — particularly the military coup that removed Niger’s pro-Western government hours before she launched her multi-stop tour of the region.

“In over 20 years working with the Americans, I have never seen them so desperate,” the official told The Grayzone, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Pretoria was well aware of Nuland’s hawkish reputation, but when she arrived in Pretoria, the official described her as “totally caught off guard” by winds of change engulfing the region. The July putsch that saw a popular military junta come to power in Niger followed military coups in Mali and Burkina Faso that were similarly inspired by mass anti-colonial sentiment.

And now Gabon has similarly overthrown its US-funded French colonial puppet government:

The United States has invested millions of dollars in foreign assistance to an African country whose military staged a successful coup against the sitting president on Wednesday. The U.S. has sent roughly $100 million in direct foreign assistance to Gabon, a country located in the Sahel region of Africa, since 2001, according to ForeignAssistance.gov. Additionally, Gabon has separately received approximately $42 million in direct foreign aid to improve and protect its national parks service.

A number of Gabon’s military forces arrested President Ali Bongo Ondimba in a successful coup that sought to overturn the results of a highly contentious election on Wednesday. Ondimba was arrested for “high betrayal of state institutions, massive embezzlement of public funds [and] international financial embezzlement,” according to the soldiers, who also declared on Wednesday that they would “dissolve all institutions of the republic.”

Imagine how these self-styled makers of reality are going to fare when they actually have to go up directly against China and Iran and their reliable weapons of debt money, corruption, and nepotism will avail them literally nothing.

Clown World, like Babylon, gwan fall.

DISCUSS ON SG


More Dangerous than China

Martin Armstrong of Armstrong Economics is absolutely correct to spotlight an anti-American enemy far more dangerous to Americans than the Russians or the Chinese:

QUESTION: Do you think the Neocons are more dangerous than Russia or China?

ANSWER: Absolutely. In Chess, you face your adversary. You know your enemy, and you try to unravel his strategy. In geopolitics, the greatest danger is always the enemy within your own ranks. For a handful of silver, it was a Greek who showed the path for the Persians to come behind the Spartans through the hills and annihilate them from behind in the Battle of Thermopylae. Judas also betrayed Jesus for a handful of silver. History has proven countless times that your greatest enemy always emerges from within.

Any politician who now supports Ukraine and spouts out the BS we will be next is unworthy of any public office, including sanitation cleaning toilets. They have NO place in politics and should NEVER be allowed to take the White House, regardless of their party. The Neocons have created endless wars on their own theory that democracy should dominate the world. Their version of democracy is really tyranny, for we have no right to vote on taxes, vaccines, lockdowns, or war. We are drafted with not right to vote and ordered to die on a foreign battlefield because of their theory in which we have no say whatsoever.

He’s correct. The reason the Founding Fathers specified both “enemies foreign and domestic” is because they were well-read in history and they understood that the enemy within is every bit as dangerous, and quite often more so, than the enemy without.

I expect the neocons and their cultural war colleagues will be seen by history as the US equivalent of Rome’s Praetorian Guard, making and unmaking political leaders at will as it profits them to do so. The US is no more capable of surviving its neocons than Rome survived its praetorians.

DISCUSS ON SG


Republicans for Human Sacrifice

The neoclowns couldn’t care less how many Ukrainians are dying for what they call “democracy”. They need more blood for the Blood God!

Bill Kristol and other prominent neoconservatives are launching a $2 million ad campaign to urge Republicans to continue backing aid for Ukraine.

Defending Democracy Together, led by Kristol and Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, launched Republicans for Ukraine to boost Republican support for Ukraine. The ad campaign precedes what will be a contentious fight over President Joe Biden’s $24 billion request for aid for Ukraine.

The ads will appear online, on billboards, and on television, including the first Republican debate on August 23.

I never imagined that the neoconservatives were actually more evil than the communists they opposed, especially since their opposition to communism was the only reason they were “Republicans” instead of Democrats in the first place.

DISCUSS ON SG


Smoking Their Own Supply

The Neoclowns’ collective delusion concerning the global geostrategic situation is off the freaking charts. They actually believed the recent Jeddah conference, which accomplished precisely nothing and has already been completely forgotten, was going to be the combination of Versailles and Nuremberg.

Sullivan, the national security adviser, recently brought an American delegation to the second international peace summit earlier this month at Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. India and China both sent delegations to the session, perhaps drawn to Saudi Arabia for its immense oil reserves. One Indian academic observer dismissed the event as achieving little more than “good advertising for MBS’s convening power within the Global South; the kingdom’s positioning in the same; and perhaps more narrowly, aiding American efforts to build consensus by making sure China attends the meeting with . . . Jake Sullivan in the same room.”

Meanwhile, far away on the battlefield in Ukraine, Russia continued to thwart Zelensky’s ongoing counteroffensive. I asked an American intelligence official why it was Sullivan who emerged from the Biden administration’s foreign policy circle to preside over the inconsequential conference in Saudi Arabia.

“Jeddah was Sullivan’s baby,” the official said. “He planned it to be Biden’s equivalent of [President Woodrow] Wilson’s Versailles. The grand alliance of the free world meeting in a victory celebration after the humiliating defeat of the hated foe to determine the shape of nations for the next generation. Fame and Glory. Promotion and re-election. The jewel in the crown was to be Zelensky’s achievement of Putin’s unconditional surrender after the lightning spring offensive. They were even planning a Nuremberg type trial at the world court, with Jake as our representative. Just one more fuck-up, but who is counting?

It’s like they’re getting their strategic direction from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “We can achieve anything, so long as we do it… together!” All that’s missing is a dramatic image of Girl Power. In the meantime, here’s another fuck-up to add to the growing collection of Clown World catastrophes:

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has sent letters to Denmark and Norway assuring that the Biden government would expedite approvals for all transfers of F-16s to Ukraine. In the letters Blinken said that the F-16s would transfered once Ukrainian pilots have completed the Danish and Norwegian lead training program:

I am writing to express the United States’ full support for both the transfer of F-16 fighter aircraft to Ukraine and for the training of Ukrainian pilots by qualified F-16 instructors…. It remains critical that Ukraine is able to defend itself against ongoing Russian aggression and violation of its sovereignty.

The letters from Secretary Blinken mark the first time the Biden regime has given a hard commitment to supplying the Ukrainian military with F-16s.

Keep in mind that the only way F-16s could be useful in Ukraine is if they are nuclear-armed, and even then, the chances that they would survive long enough to get in range of any strategic Russian targets is remote. This isn’t WWII and air power is now almost entirely useless. Ten more years of technological development should be enough to mark the end of manned aircraft in war due to satellite, targeting, drone swarms, and laser technology.

There is a reason Russia isn’t making much use of its air superiority, and that is because it is simply too dangerous to fly over the modern battlefield. Artillery and air defense are now the order of the day.

I suspect Blinken wrote those letters in the hopes that Russia will settle for an armistice long before the pilot training can be completed and the F-16s sent to Ukraine to be shot down… assuming they can be hidden on the ground long enough to avoid being destroyed by hypersonic missiles.

Clown World isn’t just evil, it is quite literally deranged. This is the end result of eight decades of relentless lying to everyone, including themselves. Success always plants the seeds of failure, but even a two-bit drug dealer knows better than to smoke his own supply.

DISCUSS ON SG


Reality Defeats the NATO Narrative

To the surprise of absolutely no intelligent observer, the much-vaunted Ukrainian “offensive” that didn’t even manage to reach the first Russian line of defense has proven to be a failure of catastrophic proportions. So catastrophic that even the US intelligence agencies are now publicly admitting that the Kiev regime cannot win the war no matter how much help it receives from NATO:

US intelligence agencies have made a “grim” assessment of Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive, believing Kiev will fail to plunge south toward the Crimean Peninsula by the end of the year, according to the Washington Post.

Officials have voiced grave doubts about the Ukrainian mission in a classified intel report, the contents of which were relayed to the Post on Thursday, with the outlet citing Moscow’s “brutal proficiency” in defending captured territory.

“The US intelligence community assesses that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will fail to reach the key southeastern city of Melitopol,” the report said, adding that Kiev would then be unable to “fulfill its principal objective of severing Russia’s land bridge to Crimea in this year’s push.”

The Post report appears to echo recent revelations by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. In a story published earlier on Thursday, he cited an unnamed US intelligence official who bluntly stated that Ukraine “will not win the war.”

The CIA warned US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive against Russian forces would fail, and that Kiev “will not win the war,” American journalist Seymour Hersh reported on Thursday. Blinken “has figured out that the United States – that is, our ally Ukraine – will not win the war” against Russia, Hersh wrote on his Substack blog, quoting an anonymous US intelligence official.

“The word was getting to him through the Agency [CIA] that the Ukrainian offense was not going to work,” Hersh’s source continued, without specifying when these warnings began to surface. “It was a show by [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky and there were some in the administration who believed his bulls**t.”

You may recall that I told you the Kiev regime not only would not, but could not win a war with Russia. This was entirely and absolutely obvious from the start. Every single aspect of the NATO narrative was false, from Putin’s purges to Russian ammunition shortages to the existence of a popular pro-Western, anti-Putin political opposition.

In fact, the only things that have been a surprise about the war is the extent to which a) NATO countries were willing to waste money and arms, and b) Ukrainians were willing to fight and die for a foreign regime that was perfectly happy to shed their blood. If the Ukrainians had any sense of self-preservation at all, its elite 82nd Air Assault Brigade would be rounding up the NATO puppets in Kiev and putting them on trial for treason and war crimes instead of dutifully obliterating itself on three lines of sophisticated Russian defenses.

Now the Narrative is shifting, as NATO is counting on Russia’s willingness to keep what it has won and prepare to fight another war with NATO in the next ten years. One can’t discount the possibility entirely, as there might be some advantage to Russia in letting NATO pivot to China, watching the US Navy die by attrition, then rolling up what remains of Ukraine and NATO once the Europeans understand that the US military is no longer capable of bailing them out. There is a reasonable strategic case for passing the baton to China and the People’s Liberation Army while providing military aid on the African, Arabic and South American fronts.

But given the combination of future uncertainty and Russian awareness of the pure evil that drives the neoclowns, I tend to doubt that the Russians will elect to take their foot off the military gas until all of Europe has been freed from the chains of Clown World.

DISCUSS ON SG


Professionally Anti-Trump

Ben Shapiro’s organization has been paid $110,429 to attack Donald Trump since July 2021.

Did you know @realDailyWire is paid by @RonDeSantis?

In case you were wondering why so much of their content these days is ANTI TRUMP.

DeSantis has paid @benshapiro’s Daily Wire over $110,000!

Wow! That’s a lot of money for a lot of LIES!

How very strange. One would have assumed that The Littlest Chickenhawk would do it for nothing. I’m as skeptical of the 5D Chess narrative as anyone, but there has to be a reason that the neocons, the Republican Establishment, and the Democrats are attacking him so relentlessly.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Neoclowns are Doubling Down

While the Typhoid Mary of geopolitics, US regime change specialist Victoria Nuland, is busy down in Niger, attempting to forestall the opening of WWIII’s second front in Africa, it appears that the pivot to China is off for now and the Poles have volunteered to become the next man up for the slaughterhouse.

Warsaw is planning to establish a regular Polish-Ukrainian union for subsequent occupation of Western Ukraine and announced its intention to build “the strongest army” in Europe, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Wednesday. Poland has become the main instrument of the US anti-Russian policy and declares its intention to build “the most powerful army” in Europe, for this purpose Warsaw has started large-scale arms purchases from the US, the UK and South Korea, Sergei Shoigu said at a meeting of the board of the Russian Defense Ministry…

“Taking into account the armed forces of the Eastern European countries, about 360,000 military personnel, 8,000 armored vehicles, 6,000 artillery systems and mortars, 650 aircraft and helicopters are deployed in the immediate vicinity of the borders of the Union State,” Shoigu said during a meeting of the board of the military department.

By “Union State”, Shoigu is referring to the borders of both Russia and Belarus. So this would tend to imply that the numbers provided include Ukrainian, Polish, and assorted NATO forces. This is clearly why the Russian generals have been keeping their powder dry and their regular units in reserve, and why they have made heavy use of the Chechen light infantry and various mercenary companies, including Wagner, as well as the Donbass militia forces, in order to spare their own for the transition of the Special Military Operation into direct war with NATO.

Those border deployments may sound like a lot, but they’re not even close to enough to defend against a Russian attack, much less launch one on either Russia or Belarus. Recall that Operation Iska, launched 19 months after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, involved considerably more forces than the Germans imagined possible: 20 divisions, 15 brigades, 4,600 artillery, 500 tanks, and 900 aircraft.

While it’s almost pointless to attempt to figure out when and how the Russians are going to attack, but given their military doctrine, one can reasonably assume it is likely to be a) heavier than believed possible by the professional analysts, b) launched without any warning, and c) focused on a place that is not considered one of the most likely targets.

Consider the way in which Marshal Zhukov described the launch of Operation Iskra, which was intended to break the German siege of Leningrad.

All preparations for the operation were at last completed. The morning of January 12, 1943, was clear and frosty. General Romanovsky and I came to the 2nd Shock Army’s observation post. It was quite near the front lines, and we had a good view of the enemy’s defences in immediate depth. Columns of smoke rose here and there in the midst of the German positions. Soldiers who had been on guard duty at night when our scouts were usually active were now about to go to sleep and were lighting their stoves.

So far, silence reigned. But it was a special silence to me — the silence before an attack of historical dimensions.

In the battle, we managed to achieve a tactical surprise, though the enemy knew we were preparing to break the blockade. He may even have guessed where the Soviet troops would hit, for the shape of the front was suggestive of it. And day after day the Germans were building fortifications in the sector of the breakthrough, moving in their crack units, installing more and more guns in the bunkers built during the more than 16 months of the blockade. But when exactly we would strike, on what day and hour, and with what force, the German Command did not know.

As we learned later from prisoners, the Soviet assault which the Nazis had awaited for all of a year, came as a complete surprise to them that day, especially for its power and skill.

The Russians took 105,000 casualties in 18 days and considered it to have been a very significant strategic success.

Keep in mind that the Russians are well aware of the need to disguise the preparations and troop movements leading up to an offensive. The very successful maskirovka put into effect by the Serbian forces to hide their armor from NATO air strikes and render them generally ineffective was developed from Russian military doctrine. So even though satellite and other technologies provide massive quantities of information to NATO analysts and planners, it will not be surprising if the Russians have found a way to circumvent them somehow, at least long enough to achieve tactical surprise.

Pray for the Polish people. They don’t deserve this. They suffered enough in the last World War. But the neoclowns hate them nearly as much as they hate the German and Russian peoples, and will not hesitate to sacrifice them even more brutally than they have sacrificed the Ukrainian people.

DISCUSS ON SG


Past His Sell-By Date

It’s clear that NATO is preparing to jettison Zelensky and blame the Russians for his “assassination”; the neoclown media is openly discussing how Zelensky will be replaced as the head of the Kiev puppet regime in an article that reads as if it was written by Henry II.

“Will no one rid of us this troublesome beggar?”

Given the stakes, and the risk, it is little wonder Ukrainian officials tend to brush off requests to discuss what would happen were Russia to succeed — or they decline to go on the record, worrying the topic appears far too macabre.

And yet, despite the reluctance to publicly engage with the question, there is a plan in place, according to interviews with Ukrainian officials and lawmakers as well as analysts. Indeed, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said as much: “The Ukrainians have plans in place — that I’m not going to talk about or get into any details on — to make sure that there is what we would call ‘continuity of government’ one way or another,” he told CBS news last year.

Ukraine’s Parliament chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk | STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images
Formally, under the constitution, the line of succession is clear. “When the president is unable to fulfill his duties, the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine [the Ukrainian parliament] takes over his responsibilities,” said Mykola Knyazhytsky, an opposition lawmaker from the western city of Lviv. “Therefore, there would be no power vacuum.”

The chairman of the Verkhovna Rada — Ruslan Stefanchuk, a member of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party — doesn’t have an especially high trust rating in opinion polls. It is around 40 percent, less than half of Zelenskyy’s. And he’s not popular with opposition lawmakers.

“But I don’t think it matters,” said Adrian Karatnycky, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “There’s a strong leadership team and I think we would see collective government,” he added.

The governing council would most likely consist of Stefanchuk as the figurehead, along with Andrii Yermak, the former movie producer and lawyer who’s the head of the office of the president, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov. Valery Zaluzhny would remain as the country’s top general.

Karatnycky said he would hope to see a role for TV personality Serhiy Prytula, who now runs major charitable initiatives and has a sky-high public trust rating.

Ukraine’s plan if Russia assassinates Zelenskyy, POLITICO, 1 August 2023

Zelensky has nothing to fear from Russia. He’s one of the Russian military’s greatest assets, as he successfully convinced NATO to throw away their donated forces in a manner that has done about as little damage to Russia as possible; Faramir’s cavalry charge against the fortified position of Mordor’s archers in the Jackson film was equally well-conceived and did just about as much harm to the defenders.

Simplicius has worked out that Ukraine may be already down to as little as only 100 tanks remaining to its entire armed forces.

The offensive is now about 2 months old and was of a highly elevated intensity. That means it’s not out of the realm of possibility that their losses were double the rate at 150-200 per month, which would put us at 400 after 2 months. Finally, given that we had come to the ~500 number earlier, subtracting the new ~400 losses would mean that the AFU would be at an absolutely dire state of only 100 remaining tanks. Even if we give them the benefit of the doubt and say perhaps it’s a bit higher at 200-300 left, this is much less than it sounds given that it represents as little as two weeks’ worth of losses in current high intensity combat levels. If my numbers are even remotely close then that is disastrous. It would mean the AFU is on the verge of collapse.

Which, of course, is why the more hawkish neoclowns have already made the decision to give up on the Russian front. So if they get their way and succeed in forcing NATO to pivot to war with China, Zelensky will be a major liability and embarrassment to the governments of the West. This very public warning shot across Zelensky’s bow may, in fact, be the first sign that the pivot to China is underway and will soon be followed by an announcement about NATO-Russian negotiations.

UPDATE: CNBC confirms the new narrative on Zelensky.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s conduct is a source of annoyance in Washington, CNBC reported on Wednesday. Zelensky angers his American backers by ignoring their orders and issuing ever-greater demands, anonymous officials told the network.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Final Phase

Col Douglas Macgregor believes the Ukrainian Army is breaking down and that the war, at least in its current form, is in its final phase.

I think the Ukrainians have lost probably somewhere between 300,000 and 350,000 dead on the battlefield. How many wounded is anybody’s guess, at this stage all we know is that the hospitals are full, there’s no room left. The Ukrainian Army is having great difficulty evacuating wounded in many cases.

I think the Ukrainian Army itself is breaking down. Many units have simply melted away. Some have gone over to the Russians, not because they wanted to join the Russians, but they said, look, you know, we’ve got very little ammunition left, we’ve got lots of wounded. We’ve contacted our superiors, they say
they can’t evacuate us so we’re going to surrender. Yeah, I think we’ve almost reached the end game,
we’re certainly in the final phase of this war.

Assuming that Macgregor is reasonably correct, the question is whether the neoclowns double down and send in the Polish Army as well as whatever US forces it can muster, or whether they’ll take the best deal they can get from Putin before pivoting to take on China. The latter is looking more and more likely; the bat signal has observably gone out and the media has already begun the unwieldy process of making a 180-degree narrative shift:

When Edward Luttwak speaks, world leaders listen — and now they must consider heeding his advice on Ukraine. Luttwak has been advising world leaders, including U.S. presidents, since the 1980s…

Luttwak believes that despite all the talk in Washington and in other Western capitals about “unwavering support” for Ukraine, Western leaders, including President Joe Biden, seek a negotiated settlement with Russia. The much-anticipated Ukrainian offensive has stalled. Russia’s government survived a scare by the Wagner Group, and its troops are fighting better now than in the first year of the war. Historically, “when Russia goes to war they always mess up” at first, Luttwak says, but “as the war goes on Russians fight better,” and that is what is happening now. Top U.S. officials, like CIA Director William J. Burns, recognize this fact and have advised Biden accordingly, which is why Biden poured cold water on the Ukraine-in-NATO suggestion. Putin, Luttwak noted, has also publicly pulled back from the “nuclear threat” in a signal to Ukraine and the U.S. that a negotiated solution is possible.

Luttwak also contends that Ukraine’s leaders also know that a negotiated peace is the most realistic scenario for ending the war. U.S. leaders, according to Luttwak, want a Russia–Ukraine settlement precisely because of the more significant geopolitical threat of China in the western Pacific. This is in line with what former Pentagon official Elbridge Colby has suggested.

Edward Luttwak: The U.S. Must End the Russia–Ukraine War, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR, 28 July 2023

More about this anon. I’ve been reading a collection of pre-2001 essays edited by Robert Kagan, and ironically enough, it appears that thanks in large part to his wife, the neoclowns have inadvertently managed to bring about the very thing they most feared, a strong geostrategic alliance between Russia and China.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Last Stage of the Current Phase

Russian President Vladimir Putin provides an update on the coming end to the Special Military Operation:

Moscow ready for ‘any scenario’ with NATO

Aside from the conflict with Ukraine, this month saw several non-fatal incidents in Syrian skies involving Russian aircraft and US drones, with both sides blaming each other for reckless behavior. Russia would like to avoid a direct armed confrontation with the West, but keeps the worst possible scenarios in mind, Putin said. “If someone wants it – and that’s not us – then we’re ready,” he stressed.

Putin does not directly command operation in Ukraine

According to the Russian leader, as commander-in-chief, he has been receiving regular reports about the situation of the front line and speaks with his top generals several times a day. Putin added that he can reach out to “special units” when needed. However, it would be “wrong” for the president to interfere with the military and start directly commanding the troops, he said.

Kiev running out of conscripts

The Ukrainian army is not only suffering heavy losses on the battlefield, but is struggling with manpower, Putin argued. He said that, while taking prisoners, Russian authorities discovered that Ukraine had “formed military units” made up of aircraft technicians. “What does it tell us? That their mobilization resources are depleting,” the Russian leader said. He previously noted that Kiev’s forces had lost dozens of pieces of Western armor, including German-made Leopard 2 tanks and US-supplied Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.

Putin is clarifying what we’ve already been observing from multiple sources: the Kiev regime is done without direct intervention from NATO. No amount of additional equipment, armor, aircraft, ammunition, or mercenaries is going to change anything for the regime’s operational or strategic position; a meaningless shift of a few kilometers here or there on the tactical front is the most that can potentially be accomplished. Russia has won the war of attrition.

So, NATO now faces a choice. Direct and open war with a Russian military that has completed its initial stage of mobilization and is prepared to engage its forces, the greater part of which are not even present on the European continent right now, or back down, admit that it has lost its proxy war, and attempt to negotiate a surrender to the Russians. Despite his bold words about ending Clown World, Putin has sent clear signals that he will accept the latter. So, the Special Military Operation will soon come to an end, but whether that end will be war or peace is yet to be learned.

Interestingly enough, the most rabid hawks among the neoclowns are pushing for negotiation and peace with Russia. See: Edward Luttwalk. This is because they are anticipating direct war with China, and they do not want to find themselves committed to a two-front war that cannot be won. While this is superficially the correct position, it’s an excessively optimistic one because Russia and China are not going to be divided by factional funding and clever word games; both Xi and Putin are well aware of how the neoclowns have successfully divided and conquered one enemy after another since the end of World War II.

The dumber sort of neoclowns, the sort who believe their own wordspells, are pushing for Poland to enter the war, because they know that Americans won’t support direct war with Russia but they aren’t prepared to give up when Russia is so close to running out of ammunition and Putin is about to be overthrown by a) rebel mercenaries, b) Russian democrats, or c) neurologically-enhanced cyberotters. The disastrous history of Polish democracy suggests this is possible, but given the way Putin has already stated that he’s open to giving Western Ukraine to Poland, I think it’s unlikely unless something gets sparked by Wagner in Belarus on the Polish border. There is a negotiated scenario where Poland, Belarus, and Russia all win, at the expensive of Kiev, and since the only NATO opinion that matters is that of the US neoclowns, I see the “divide-up-Western-Ukraine” as being a more likely outcome than a second NATO war by proxy with Poland playing the role of Ukraine.

However, war, unlike the tango, doesn’t take two. No matter what the immediate outcome of the Special Military Operation turns out to be, any negotiated settlement is even less likely to hold for the intermediate term than the Treaty of Versailles. Once the US-China war begins, Russia is almost certainly going to set itself to completing the task of de-NATOing Europe and excising the neoclown influence from the continent.

So, ironically, it might be better for Americans – though much worse for Europeans – if the neoclowns were to choose war with Russia and be comprehensively defeated even before the anticipated war with China, than opting for a short-term peace that will guarantee war on two fronts with two better-prepared and strategically-superior opponents.

DISCUSS ON SG