An Economy of Force

A pro-Russian analyst explains why the media keeps overreporting massive quantities of Russian casualties while the Russians control the battlespace and continue to take Ukrainian villages and cities. Note that BTG stands for “Battalion Tactical Group”, a combined-arms manoeuvre unit deployed by the Russian Army that comprises a mechanized infantry battalion of 2–4 companies reinforced with air-defence, artillery, engineering, and logistical support units.

I have counted every single brigade and BTG listed on the map and have come out with a startling find that correlates exactly with what I’ve been saying for a while, and have written in detail about in the last report. Namely: there appears to be only about 50-60 total Russian BTGs in Ukraine. Considering that a Russian BTG is listed as having an estimated 600-800 men, this would amount to 50,000 – 60,000 troops in total deployment. The author himself has stated these are all the confirmed groups in the country. You can check for yourself, every unit is listed typically as either regiment or brigade. A regiment is supposed to have around 1,000 men. A Russian brigade is typically composed of 2 BTGs but on the map if you click each ‘brigade’ the exact disposition is given, and many of them say 1 BTG while others are 2 BTG. And yes, the ‘expert’ behind this new map has stated that he believes Russian total BTGs is much less than was advertised, and he is a fully pro-western ‘analyst’. He believes Russia originally started with maybe in the ~80 BTGs range, but of course conveniently he never managed to track any of those missing 30 or so, and in fact attributes them to having been destroyed, since the current operative ‘narrative’ amongst the completely lost western “OSINT armchair analyst” crowd is that Russia has lost 20-30 BTGs – an extrapolation of the laughably inflated “official figures” from Kiev that list Russian losses as 30,000 KIA, etc. Like I said, it’s quite convenient that those ‘destroyed’ phantom BTGs were in fact never tracked or witnessed in theater by the experts, and the ones that ARE being tracked just so perfectly happen to fall into the 50 BTG range.

What’s interesting is that, prior to the onset of a major propaganda campaign on the eve of the military operation, when the CIA had to go into full fear-mongering mode, even sources like CNN were reporting the following last year: “In April and September this year, Russia pulled than 50 battalion tactical groups to our borders. Currently, 41 battalion tactical groups are in combat readiness around Ukraine and in the temporarily occupied Crimea. Of these, 33 stay on a permanent basis and eight have been additionally transferred to Crimea.”

This sounds remarkably similar to the troop disposition the military experts tracking every single unit in the theater are seeing. It seems the much vaunted “180 BTGs” bogeyman was all hype and propaganda.

More and more experts are now starting to backtrack and also opine that Russia might be using way less forces than initially suspected.

This economy of force makes sense, particularly because it was obvious from the start that a) Russia wasn’t utilizing its best units and b) Russia was much more concerned about fighting a much larger conflict with NATO forces than it was about the Ukrainian forces with which it was already engaged.

Of course, in the aftermath of the successful Syrian operation, which was also performed with a minimal force, the economy of force utilized tends to indicate that Russia’s military capabilities are even more formidable than previously estimated if subsquently proven to be true.

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A Kremlin Perspective

An interview with Sergey Karaganov, a former advisor to Vladimir Putin, on a variety of important geopolitical subjects.

BM You talked about demilitarisation of Ukraine, but it seems that such a goal would not be achieved if the West continues to provide Ukraine with weapons. Do you think Russia will be tempted to stop that flow of arms, and does this risk a direct clash between Nato and Russia?

SK Absolutely! There is a growing probability of a direct clash. And we don’t know what the outcome of this would be. Maybe the Poles would fight; they are always willing. I know as a historian that Article 5 of the Nato treaty is worthless. Under Article 5 – which allows a state to call for support from other members of the alliance – nobody is obliged to actually fight on behalf of others, but nobody can be absolutely sure that there would be no such escalation. I also know from the history of American nuclear strategy that the US is unlikely to defend Europe with nuclear weapons. But there is still a chance of escalation here, so it is an abysmal scenario and I hope that some kind of a peace agreement between us and the US, and between us and Ukraine, can be reached before we go further into this unbelievably dangerous world.

He’s correct. Britain and France both guaranteed Polish security prior to WWII, and both refused to defend Poland against Germany or to declare war against the Soviet Union when it invaded Poland. Article 5 of the NATO treaty doesn’t oblige any nation to do anything, although since the neocons who run US foreign policy want a war with Russia, it is likely that most nations would submit to US pressure to declare war on Russia in the event of an escalation of the Ukrainian conflict.

BM One argument is that Russia will fall under Chinese control, and this war does not help – because by isolating Russia from the West, it turns Russia into easy prey for Chinese economic influence. Are you worried that this could be the beginning of a “Chinese century” for Russia?

SK There are two answers to your question. One is that China’s economic influence in Russia and over Russia will grow. China has most of the technologies we need, and it has a lot of capital, so there is no question about that. Whether Russia would become a kind of a satellite country, according to the Chinese tradition of their Middle Kingdom, I doubt it.

If you asked me how I would describe Russia in one word, it is “sovereignty”. We defeated those who sought to rule us, starting with the Mongols, and then Carl [Charles XII] of Sweden, then Napoleon and Hitler. Also, recently, we had years of Western domination here. It was almost overwhelming. And nevertheless, you see what has happened: Russia revolted against all that. So I am not afraid of Russia becoming a part of a great China. The other reason I’m not afraid is because Chinese civilisation is very different. We have our Asian traits in our genes, and we are in part an Asian country because of this. And Siberia is at the core of the Russian empire: without Siberia, Russia wouldn’t have become a great country. And the Tatar and Mongol yoke left many traits in our society. But culturally, we are different, so I don’t think it is possible that we will become a subsidiary country.

But I am very concerned about the overwhelming economic predominance of China over the next decade. People like me have been saying precisely [that] we have to solve the Ukraine problem, we have to solve the Nato problem, so that we can be in a strong position vis-à-vis China. Now it will be much more difficult for Russia to resist Chinese power.

Better China than the global satanists. China is an ancient and stable civilization. Global satanry has repeatedly proven that it is even capable of sustaining a functional society for three generations. And while Chinese civilization is not Western civilization, it definitely works for most of its inhabitants in a way that the insane wickedness of globohomo never can.

SK We all feel like we are part of a huge event in history, and it’s not just about war in Ukraine; it’s about the final crash of the international system that was created after the Second World War and then, in a different way, was recreated after the collapse of the Soviet Union. So, we are witnessing the collapse of an economic system – of the world economic system – globalisation in this form is finished. Whatever we have had in the past is gone. And out of this we have a build-up of many crises that, because of Covid-19, we pretended did not exist. For two years, the pandemic replaced decision-making. Covid was bad enough, but now everybody has forgotten about Covid and we can see that everything is collapsing. Personally, I’m tremendously saddened. I worked for the creation of a viable and fair system. But I am part of Russia, so I only wish that we win, whatever that means.

BM Do you sometimes fear this could be the rebirth of Western power and American power; that the Ukraine war could be a moment of renewal for the American empire?

SK I don’t think so. The problem is that during the last 500 years the foundation of Western power was the military preponderance of Europeans. This foundation started eroding from the 1950s and 1960s. Then the collapse of the Soviet Union made it seem for a while that Western predominance was back, but now it is done away with, because Russia will continue to be a major military power and China is becoming a first-class military power.

So the West will never recuperate, but it doesn’t matter if it dies: Western civilisation has brought all of us great benefits, but now people like myself and others are questioning the moral foundation of Western civilisation. I think geopolitically the West will experience ups and downs. Maybe the shocks we are experiencing could bring back the better qualities of Western civilisation, and we will again see people like Roosevelt, Churchill, Adenauer, de Gaulle and Brandt back in office. But continuous shocks will of course also mean that democracy in its present form in most European countries will not survive, because under circumstances of great tension, democracies always wither away or become autocratic. These changes are inevitable.

No national empire ever recovers its former greatness. America has been invaded, overthrown, and occupied. It is a nation ruled by foreigners, women, and devil-worshippers. It will survive, but Americans will never again tower over the world the way they did after WWII.

To the extent that “the West” now means “the Enlightenment”, one must question the moral foundation of Western civilization. The focus must be on return to Christendom and the nations, not on what has proven to be an insidious anti-Christian philosophy of materialism.

UPDATE: And the next phase begins.

Russian gas giant Gazprom has officially halted all deliveries to Europe via the Yamal-Europe pipeline, a critical artery for European energy supplies.

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A Direct Challenge

Russia and China are openly challenging globohomo’s New Neo-Liberal Rules-Based World Order.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is meeting, on Wednesday, with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, for the first time since Moscow launched its military campaign in Ukraine on February 24. Unlike most Western nations, and some Asian countries, Beijing has refused to condemn Moscow and rejected calls to impose sanctions.

The neighboring countries will work to achieve “a multipolar, fair, and democratic world order,” Lavrov said after arriving in Tunxi, a city in China’s eastern inland Anhui Province, on Wednesday.

TASS quoted Wang as saying that despite “new challenges” to the ties between the two nations, “the will of both sides to develop bilateral relations has become even stronger.” The minister said this month that China’s relations with Russia is “one of the most crucial bilateral relationships in the world,” and hailed the friendship between the pair as “ironclad.”

Translation: US military failures in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine have led the two great regional powers to conclude that the wicked Empire That Never Ended has definitively entered its decline phase, which means that it can be successfully challenged.

We would be fortunate indeed to witness the defeat of global satanry and a restoration of Christendom. No one is expecting it to be granted favored legal status in China, but then, no one was expecting Constantine to reject paganism and embrace Christianity either.

And certainly none of us who grew up in the red shadow of the atheist Soviet Union was expected what has happened in Russia since 1991.

In the meantime, this joint statement makes it very unlikely that Russia will not follow through on its threat to cut off gas supplies to European countries that refuse to pay in rubles.

So far, the EU and G7 nations have rejected Russia’s demand to switch their payments for gas to rubles. Russia said it will not provide free gas supplies, suggesting that it is ready to shut off the taps. If that happens Moscow would lose between €200 million to €800 million each day of the embargo. However, Russia could redirect some of the gas to Asia. Europe would likely face an economic crisis not seen since WWII, as soaring energy prices would send the region’s economies into recession. So, who will blink first?

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The Russians are Panicking

But not for the reason the globalists would like you to believe. To the contrary, they’re worried that Vladimir Putin is going to stop too soon:

There is a true panic going through the Russian society. It is due to the talk happening in Turkey between Russians and the Ukronazis. This is a sore point with most Russians because in Russian history there have been plenty of examples of Russian diplomats literally wasting away what was acquired by the blood of Russian soldiers. And just to make it worse, Russians remember the infamous Khasaviurt agreements and the two Minsk Agreements. The notion of a “Minsk 3.0” absolutely horrifies many Russians, including myself. So this begs the question – are these fears founded, yes or no?

I think that they both are and are not founded, let me explain. Here are some of the reasons why these negotiations are creating fear, uncertainty and doubts:

First, if you want to denazify the Ukraine, why negotiate with Nazis in the first place? Does the concept of “denazification” not imply regime change in Kiev?
Second, what is the notion of dramatically reducing the combat activities around Kiev and Chernigov??? Does that mean that Russia has given up on the notion of liberating these towns?
Some of the delegates sent by Russia are rather pathetic looking, like the head of the delegation, Vladimir Medinsky.
What in the world is Abramovich doing anywhere near these negotiations???

Read the rest of the article for some possible answers to those questions.

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The Financial Fifth Column

Vladimir Putin’s economics advisor considers the probable effects of the massive globalist sanctions on Russia and concludes most of them can be negated with proper banking policies:

The damage caused by US financial sanctions is inextricably linked to the monetary policy of the Bank of Russia which is the ideal one for them. Its essence boils down to a tight binding of the ruble issue to export earnings, and the ruble exchange rate to the dollar. In fact, an artificial shortage of money is being created in the economy, and the strict policy of the Central Bank leads to an increase in the cost of lending, which kills business activity and hinders the development of infrastructure in the country.

Sanctions restrictions have caused an extremely high demand for corporate financing in the domestic market. Against the background of a relatively low key rate and access to cheaper funding, large banks consistently keep a net interest margin above the average market level, 5.4% to 6%; whereas for the largest banks in China, the USA, Germany, France, Great Britain and Japan, the net interest margin ranges from 0.8% to 2.3%.

However, these windfalls are not directed to financing infrastructure projects, but to the acquisition of disparate non-core businesses that are combined into ecosystems. Most of these businesses remain unprofitable even at the EBITDA [earnings] level. Despite this, billions of rubles are still spent on their development. These figures are quite comparable to the volume of investments in a major infrastructure project in the real sector of the economy, which can bring both job growth and contribution to the development of the economy. But such projects (as well as filling the budget) are still left to the raw materials companies, while the largest financial corporations prefer to direct their income to the creation of chimeras.

In fact, it was the connivance of the Central Bank which led to the fact that Russia and its industry were drained of blood and unable to develop.

If the Central Bank fulfilled its constitutional duty to ensure the stability of the ruble — and it has all the possibilities for this due to the threefold surplus of the currency reserves of the monetary base — then financial sanctions would be nothing to us. They could even be turned, as in other sectors of the economy, to the benefit of the banking sector, if the Central Bank replaced the loans withdrawn by Western partners with its own special refinancing instruments. This would increase the capacity of the Russian credit and banking system by more than 10 trillion rubles. Also, it would fully compensate for the outflow of foreign financing of investments, preventing a decline in investment and economic activity without any inflationary consequences. Thus, it would be possible to avoid a long period of decline in real incomes of the population caused solely by the peculiarities of the monetary policy pursued in Russia, which ensured the effectiveness of sanctions in the monetary and financial sphere.

Assessing the consequences of anti-Russian sanctions, it is impossible to ignore the consequences of severing economic ties with Ukraine. The mutual abolition of the free trade regime and the imposition of an embargo on a wide range of goods led to the rupture of cooperative ties that ensured the reproduction of many types of high-tech products. Blocking the work of Russian banks led to the depreciation of multibillion-dollar Russian investments. The refusal of the Ukrainian authorities to service the debt to Russia caused several billion dollars’ more losses. In total, their volume is estimated at about $100 billion for each of the parties. This is really significant and in many ways irreparable real damage, which we ourselves have aggravated with retaliatory sanctions.

To date, the outcome of the economic consequences of anti-Russian sanctions is as follows. Ukraine suffered the biggest losses relative to GDP, in absolute terms — the European Union. Russian losses of potential GDP, since 2014, amount to about 50 trillion rubles. But only 10% of them can be explained by sanctions, while 80% of them were the result of monetary policy. The United States benefits from anti-Russian sanctions, replacing the export of Russian hydrocarbons to the EU, as well as China; replacing the import of European goods by Russia. We could completely offset the negative consequences of financial sanctions if the Bank of Russia fulfilled its constitutional duty to ensure a stable ruble exchange rate, and not the recommendations of Washington financial organizations.

Consider the threats of American and European Russophobes against the new ‘sanctions from hell’. It has already been mentioned above that the threat of disconnecting Russian banks from the SWIFT system, widely discussed in the media today, although it will interfere with international settlements at first, will benefit the Russian banking and payment system in the medium term.

The threat to ban transactions with Russian bonds will also benefit us, since their issue in a budget surplus is nothing more than a source of profit for foreign speculators. And their profitability is overestimated three times in relation to the market assessment of their riskiness. The termination of the self-serving [самоедской] policy of the monetary authorities, who are borrowing money which is objectively unnecessary to the budget at exorbitant prices, will allow us to save billions of dollars. If the sanctioneers try to prohibit the purchase of the foreign currency bonds of Russian corporations, then it will be possible to compensate for the missing financing for the purchase of imported equipment by buying them out at the expense of part of the excess foreign exchange reserves. If foreign loans are cut off to them, then the risk of their default will fall on the European and American banks themselves.

There is also a potential risk of seizure of Russian state assets. But we can respond to this symmetrically by imposing an embargo on servicing debt obligations to Western creditors and also arresting their assets. The losses of the parties will be approximately equal.

There remains, in fact, one threat – to take away foreign assets from Russian oligarchs. For all its popularity among the common people, this will stimulate the return of capital exported from the country, which will also have a positive effect for the Russian economy.

The evils of free trade are such that the penalties imposed by its defenders are actually a long-term blessing. However, incompetent or treasonous monetary policy can harm any country, regardless of what its external trade possibilities are. In any case, sovereignty is always more important than sanctions or access to global markets, especially for a country rich in human potential and natural resources.

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The Renaissance Man

It turns out that the Russians were telling the truth, there is a direct tie between the Biden crime family and the US bioweapon laboratories in the Ukraine, and the FBI was in possession of the evidence proving that for more than 15 months prior to the Russian special military operation there:

Russia’s assertion that President Biden’s son Hunter was “financing . . . biological laboratories in Ukraine” was based in truth, according to e-mails reviewed by The Post.

A trove of e-mails on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop — the existence of which was exclusively reported by The Post in October 2020 — found that he played a role in helping a California defense contractor analyze killer diseases and bioweapons in Ukraine.

Moscow has claimed that secret American biological-warfare labs in Ukraine were a justification for its unprovoked invasion of the neighboring country last month. It doubled down on the accusations Thursday, claiming the labs produced biochemical weapons at the Biden family’s behest.

“US President Joe Biden himself is involved in the creation of biolaboratories in Ukraine,” Russia’s State Duma speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin said, according to state media.

“An investment fund run by his sun [sic] Hunter Biden funded research and the implementation of the United States’ military biological program. It is obvious that Joe Biden, as his father and the head of state, was aware of that activity,” Volodin continued, demanding a US Congressional investigation and a White House explanation.

US intelligence officials had earlier dismissed Russia’s messaging as war propaganda, explaining that Ukraine’s network of biological labs dedicated to pathogen research were not secret, and had publicly received funding from Washington.

However, Russia’s new claim that the first son’s investment fund was involved in raising money for biolab projects in Ukraine was accurate, according to e-mails involving Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine, first obtained by The Post and initially reported on by The Daily Mail Friday.

Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners invested $500,000 in the San Francisco pathogen research company Metabiota and raised millions more through firms that included Goldman Sachs, according to the e-mails found on the computer, which was abandoned at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019 as Joe Biden ran for president.

Hunter introduced Metabiota to officials at Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company where he was a board member, for a “science project” involving biolabs in Ukraine, the e-mails show.

A memo from a Metabiota official to the then-vice president’s son in 2014 said the company could “assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia.”

Hunter’s a busy guy right out of a Bond film written by scriptwriters on an LSD trip. Who would have imagined that when Hunter’s not painting million-dollar paintings, banging prostitutes, banging his relatives, banging his underage relatives, smoking meth, or sitting on the board of major international petrochemical corporations, he’s constructing secret weapons labs in Ukraine.

Some might conclude from all this that he’s just a figurehead intended to be a fall guy for the dark financial forces of the pedocracy, but I think he’s just an example of peak Sigma grindset, the perfect ideal of the modern, multi-talented, 21st-century Renaissance man.

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Regime Change in Russia

Joe Biden unilaterally declares war on the nation with the most nuclear weapons on the planet.

Now we deign to ourselves the right to remove a nuclear power’s leader and denude its government?

What has Putin argued was the goal of The United States and NATO all along, starting with the lies put forward during the integration process of Germany, we have now confirmed as official US policy?

To destroy Russia — erase it as a nation and replace its government with one fashioned after our ideals.

We have called this claim of Putin’s propaganda, and claimed that was not our goal, nor that of the Western Nations, including but not limited to NATO and the remainder of Europe.

President Biden just admitted that Putin not only as not publishing propaganda now he was never wrong; the Russian premise, that our actions from 2004 forward when we admitted former Soviet satellites to NATO, was indeed to destroy Russia’s government and Russian national identity.

“In this battle we need to be clear-eyed. This battle will not be won in days, or months, either,” Biden said.

So this is not really about Ukraine at all, is it?

No.

Ukraine is simply a foil, a convenient hotbed of corruption that was “useful” to the underlying goal.

The official goal of the Biden Administration is the destruction of Russia.

For the last two decades, across Adminsitrations, it has been about destroying Russia.

And as long as Biden and those who enable him to continue to be President do so it will continue to be about exactly that, which means the real “western goal” is exactly what Putin said it was, and which we stridently (and falsely) maintained it was not.

We got away with this — a policy of “regime change” — in multiple other places. Bosnia and Iraq to name two of several.

Putin isn’t the problem with this statement.

The entire Russian Federal Assembly, along with the Russian people are the problem. Joe Biden just declared war on their political system, their representation such as it is, and their way of life, stating that the United States is now committed to their destruction however long it may take, recognizing and committing to the fact that it will not occur in days, weeks or months.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. It’s worth noting that Russia clearly pays very close attention to these sort of anti-Russian statements by national leaders and takes them at face value.

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Preparing to Back Down

Some officials of the Fake Biden Administration are beginning to think about how they’re going to climb down from the “Failed Russian Invasion” narrative they’ve relentlessly pushed since the day it began now that it is becoming obvious that they simply didn’t understand Russia’s limited objectives:

One major issue the Tiger Team is looking at is the threshold that could prompt the alliance to use military force in Ukraine. Mr. Biden has made clear that he is enormously reluctant to do so, fearing that direct confrontation with Russia could escalate the conflict beyond control. “That’s World War III,” he noted recently.

A second team of officials, also created by Mr. Sullivan’s Feb. 28 memo, is looking at long-term opportunities for the United States to improve its geopolitical position as a result of Mr. Putin’s invasion. Inside the White House, it has become an article of faith that the Russian leader made a huge strategic error — one that will diminish Russia’s standing, cripple its economy and alienate potential allies for years. But it is early in the conflict, other officials caution, and that conclusion may prove premature.

The immediate concern is what Mr. Putin may do next — driven by a desire to rescue a failing military effort or re-establish his credentials as a force to be feared.

Officials believe the chances that Mr. Putin will resort to detonating a nuclear weapon are small. But Russia’s steady stream of reminders that it has its arsenal at the ready, and could use it in response to anything it perceives as an “existential threat,” has put Washington on high alert.

The narrative concerning Putin’s threats about resorting to nuclear weaponry is also false. NATO, the US, and the globalist media have all interpreted these threats as indicating desperation that supports the failed invasion assumption. But that isn’t true. The reason that the Russians have continuously hammered home their willingness to use nuclear weapons, both tactical and strategic, is because US strategy specifically assumes that no one will ever use nuclear weapons under any circumstances, thereby rationalizing the use of the very conventional measures that will trigger a nuclear response under the Russian military doctrine.

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Ukraine Resorts to Black Magic

In case you weren’t certain which side in the NATO vs Russia conflict worships Satan and is relying upon him for victory:

Ukrainian witches are seeking to hold a special three-step ritual to oust Russian President Vladimir Putin, UNIAN news agency reported, citing a statement by a Kiev-based Witch Cauldron esoteric shop.

“On March 31, on the 29th lunar day, the day of corruption and curses, we, the witches of Ukraine, in collaboration with foreign partners, will perform a ritual of punishing the enemy of the Ukrainian people – Vladimir Putin,” the witches’ statement posted on Instagram reads.

The ritual will be performed in three phases, with the first one scheduled to happen at Ukraine’s “place of power,” the witches stated, apparently referring to the Bald Mountain outside Kiev. So far, some 13 witches have expressed willingness to take part in the anti-Putin coven. The second coven is set to be held at an unspecified “Slavic country” in cooperation with “foreign colleagues.” The ritual is expected to conclude with the creation of a “stone sack” for Russia’s president, who will supposedly face “isolation, ousting from power and loss of support from the inner circle.”

This is really not the amusing little joke that the media presents it as being. You may not believe in anything esoteric or occultic. But rest assured that a great many rich, powerful, and influential people do.

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Russia Will Go Nuclear… if necessary

Dominic Cummings points out that US nuclear strategy has always rested on false and self-serving assumptions.

In the Cold War America based its nuclear strategy on an intellectual framework that was false.

It defined standards of ‘rationality’ then concluded the Soviets would not use nuclear weapons in many scenarios. There was a governing tautology: rational leaders would be deterred otherwise they would be irrational. Given this tautology, more vulnerability improves ‘stability’ (e.g submarine launched weapons), while better defence is ‘destabilising’ (e.g missile defence).

The Cold War was won. The West concluded ‘we were right’. Many in the world of policy concluded: there is a reliable theory of nuclear strategy that allows us to send carefully calibrated signals, like ‘escalate to de-escalate’. You can see this false confidence in many politicians, journalists and academics over the past month. E.g Professor Elliot Cohen’s calls for America to attack Russian forces because he’s confident Putin is bluffing.

After the 1991 collapse some scholars went to talk to those actually in charge in Russia. They read documents. They discovered that we’d been wrong in crucial ways all along. Actually the Soviets planned early and heavy use of nuclear weapons in many scenarios including outbreak of conventional war in Europe.

The theoretical basis of some of the west’s analysis, such as game theory from the likes of the economist Schelling, had been disastrously misleading. More important (I think) was the development of a theory that encouraged leaders/strategists to ignore an eternal lesson of history: one story after another of people risking death in ways opponents or observers thought ‘irrational’, ‘crazy’.

Despite being a game designer, I would not hesitate to declare that history is a much more reliable guide to anticipating human behavior than game theory. Because humans are irrational creatures and game theory relies upon something that is observably rare, to the extent it can even be said to exist at all, which is to say human rationality.

Cummings also points out that the globalist narrative concerning the Russian leader flies directly in the face of these strategic assumptions.

The more you think ‘Putin made a terrible blunder in invading Ukraine, he’s lost the plot, isolated by covid fear, the institutions around him don’t work, he’s fed lies by sycophants’ — which is the standard view in London and DC today — the more sceptical you should be that simplistic ideas from the Cold War about ‘rationality’ and deterrence would work as planned.

Fortunately, the globalist narrative is entirely false. Which, no doubt, is why Cummings has reached the correct conclusion that should be shared by every Christian, every defender of Western civilization, and anyone who cherishes the Good, the Beautiful, and the True.

If you care about ‘preserving western values’, I strongly advise that you focus on regime change in London and Washington, not in Moscow. Putin is less dangerous than our own idiocracy.

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