Tag: war

People supporting immigration and the decline of the West have long argued that no amount of movement of peoples can be considered an invasion because armed and uniformed troops are not involved. Somehow, I doubt this aggressive action by Mexican troops inside the US borders will cause them to admit that the USA has been successfully invaded and occupied:

On April 13, at around 2 p.m. Central Time, a group of five or six suspected Mexican soldiers approached an unmarked vehicle of two U.S. soldiers stationed at the border in El Paso County, Texas, and ordered them out of the vehicle. According to Newsweek, which obtained the “serious incident report,” the soldiers were in fact active duty members of B Battery, 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery Regiment, not from a National Guard unit. The Mexican soldiers disarmed one of the U.S. soldiers and placed his sideaerm in the U.S. vehicle.

While the soldiers were parked south of the border fence near Clint, Texas, they were north of the Rio Grande riverbed, which placed them “appropriately in U.S. territory,” according to Maj. Mark Lazane, a spokesman for NORTHCOM. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Department of Defense (DOD), after inquiring of the Mexican government, were informed that the Mexican soldiers thought that the Americans were south of the border. “Throughout the incident, the U.S. soldiers followed all established procedures and protocols,” according to NORTHCOM.

It’s not exactly a major casus belli, but it is certainly indicative of the fact that the US military is either totally unwilling or totally unable to defend the US citizenry, the American people, or the borders of the USA.

Dmitry Orlov asserts that the US empire has already ended:

Dmitry Orlov: I think that the American empire is very much over already, but it hasn’t been put to any sort of serious stress test yet, and so nobody realizes that this is the case. Some event will come along which will leave the power center utterly humiliated and unable to countenance this humiliation and make adjustments. Things will go downhill from there as everyone in government in media does their best to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist. My hope is that the US military personnel currently scattered throughout the planet will not be simply abandoned once the money runs out, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if that is what happens.

The Saker: Lastly, a similar but fundamentally different question: can the US (as opposed to the Empire) survive Trump and, if so, how? Will there be a civil war? A military coup? Insurrection? Strikes? A US version of the Yellow Vests?

Dmitry Orlov: The US, as some set of institutions that serves the interests of some dwindling number of people, is likely to continue functioning for quite some time. The question is: who is going to be included and who isn’t? There is little doubt that retirees, as a category, have nothing to look forward to from the US: their retirements, whether public or private, have already been spent. There is little doubt that young people, who have already been bled dry by poor job prospects and ridiculous student loans, have nothing to look forward to either.

But, as I’ve said before, the US isn’t so much a country as a country club. Membership has its privileges, and members don’t care at all what life is like for those who are in the country but aren’t members of the club. The recent initiatives to let everyone in and to let non-citizens vote amply demonstrates that US citizenship, by itself, counts for absolutely nothing. The only birthright of a US citizen is to live as a bum on the street, surrounded by other bums, many of them foreigners from what Trump has termed “shithole countries.”

It will be interesting to see how public and government workers, as a group, react to the realization that the retirements they have been promised no longer exist; perhaps that will tip the entire system into a defunct state. And once the fracking bubble is over and another third of the population finds that it can no longer afford to drive, that might force through some sort of reset as well. But then the entire system of militarized police is designed to crush any sort of rebellion, and most people know that. Given the choice between certain death and just sitting on the sidewalk doing drugs, most people will choose the latter….

At this rate, when the end of the US finally arrives, most of the people won’t be in a position to notice while the rest won’t be capable of absorbing that sort of upsetting information and will choose to ignore it. Everybody wants to know how the story ends, but that sort of information probably isn’t good for anyone’s sanity.

I wouldn’t bet on the militarized police myself. When even proper militaries can’t defeat lightly armed insurgencies, no matter how cool their black tactical gear may be, the police don’t stand a chance. These questions will be determined, as always, by the side that has the higher and more resilient morale.

Military historian Martin van Creveld’s guest analyst considers the current situation in Syria from four different perspectives and arrives at some surprising conclusions:

The situation around Russia in Syria is up for debate. No doubt, Russia would like to lead a reconstruction effort in Syria, in harmony with all relevant partners, including the UN, the EU, the USA, China, India, Turkey, Iran, Israel, the Sunni Arab states including the Golf Council Countries (GCC-states), Egypt and Morocco. However, many of the parties on the list of wished-for partners are strongly hostile to each other, and it might therefore perhaps not be possible for Russia to make all these ends come together, or to cut through the proverbial “Gordian Knot”. If Russia cannot create a reconstruction for all of Syria, which is what Russia wants most of all, then Russia will have to think about a “second option” for Russia’s future presence in Syria.

What might be a “second option” for Russia in Syria?

It would not make sense at any rate for Russia to leave Syria completely. After all, Russia has spent a lot of blood and treasure to achieve the stabilization now achieved, it does not want a resurgence of Sunni extremism by groups like ISIS and similar, and it has strategic interests in Syria, including an air base and a naval base.

However, as a “second option”, if the preferred cooperation for reconstruction of all of Syria should not be achievable, would be for Russia to concentrate and reduce her presence to a part of Syria. Russia can entrench itself in north-west Syria, creating its own zone of exclusive Russian military control and administration together with Syrian forces which are sympathetic to Russia as well as to Syria’s current government. Such a “Russian” zone could consist of a square of Syria consisting of Latakia, Tartus, Homs, and Ma’arat-Al-Numan.

The area mentioned above is already mainly controlled by Russia (incl. Russia-friendly units). Good. The area contains the air and naval bases pivotal for Russian military power. Good. The area will enable Russia to keep naval and air supplies possible from outside. Good. The area is strategically located to enable Russia to reenter all other parts of Syria, north, east and south. Good. The region mentioned contains a great deal of Syria’s population, including many of the Alawites, of which a large part support the existing Syrian government under President Bashar Al-Assad. Russia can thus expect to achieve social stability, without having to allocate a lot of military resources to constantly handle large-scale hostile actions inside this zone. The area holds a great part of Syria’s economic and reconstruction-potential. Good. The ports are open for imports of food, medicine, and raw materials—and being the only ports of Syria, they even control import-export of goods to the rest of Syria. Excellent. The ports will facilitate a reconstructed economy in this area. Great.

I don’t think Russia is going to be overly concerned about reconstruction. Their priority will remain stopping the neocon-inspired imperialist offensives around the world. My take on Israel is that a re-elected and newly empowered Prime Minister Netanyahu is going to prioritize the annexations of the settlements in Gaza and the West Bank and try to dial down the conflict in Syria in the meantime. In light of the failure to unseat Assad or establish ISIS as a proxy army to replace the US military in the Middle East, further securing the Golan Heights and seeking diplomatic approval for its annexation is probably the primary Israeli objective concerning Syria.

Yellow vest demonstrators have again clashed with riot police in the French city of Toulouse as President Emmanuel Macron prepared a series of policy announcements aimed at quelling 22 consecutive weekends of anti-government protests.

The southern city resembled a war zone today as police fired teargas and arrested several people after hundreds of demonstrators started throwing objects, burning rubbish bins and trying to enter areas where protests have been banned.

Around 2,000 protesters had gathered on the Allee Jean Jaures – a wide avenue in the city centre – and on nearby side streets.

Martin van Creveld ponders the strange case of the infamous Treaty of Versailles that is widely believed to have all but guaranteed WWII as it ended WWI.

The Treaty of Versailles, the hundredth anniversary of which will be remembered in June of this year, has attracted more than its share of historical debate. What has not been said and written about it? That it did not go far enough, given that Germany lost only a relatively small part of its territory and population and was allowed to continue to exist as a unified state under a single government (French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau). That it went much too far, thus helping lay the foundations of World War II. That it imposed a “Carthaginian Peace” (the British economist John Maynard Keynes in his 1919 best-seller, The Economic Consequences of the Peace). That it was “made in order to bring twenty million Germans to their deaths, and to ruin the German nation” (according to a speech delivered in Munich on 13 April 1923 by a thirty-four year old demagogue named Adolf Hitler). All these views, and quite some others, started being thrown about almost as soon as the ink on the Treaty had dried. In one way or another, all of them are still being discussed in the literature right down to the present day.

But what was there about the Treaty that was so special? Was it really as original, as unique, as has so often been maintained? Was the brouhaha it gave rise to justified?

Read the whole thing there. It is, as you can imagine, both interesting and educational. I particularly liked the bit about the disarming of war elephants.

Now China has sent troops to Venezuela as well:

A group of Chinese soldiers arrived in Venezuela on Sunday as part of a cooperation program between Beijing and Caracas. According to reports, more than 120 soldiers from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army arrived at Venezuela’s Margarita Island to deliver humanitarian aid and military supplies to the government forces.

The arrival of the People’s Liberation Army in Venezuela comes just days after the Russian armed forces deployed to the country to install a military helicopter training facility.

However, this move by the Russian military has not come without heavy criticism from the Trump administration and several U.S. congressmen.

“Maduro calls for hands off #Venezuela while he invites security forces from Cuba and Russia, so he and his cronies can keep plundering Venezuela. It is time for Venezuelan institutions to stand for their sovereignty. Russia and Cuba, #HandsOffVenezuela,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted on March 28th.

These moves by the Russian and Chinese armed forces appear to be a powerplay against the U.S. administration, who is actively pushing to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power.

As I observed last year, Syria was a major turning point and will likely mark the end of the global US empire. The fall of Libya and the near-expansion of NATO to Ukraine and Georgia forced the Russians and the Chinese to realize that the time for resistance had finally arrived, and their strategists recognized that the US military is too weak and overextended to be capable of enforcing the Monroe Doctrine.

Since the US is almost certain to back down on Venezuela, where its chosen puppet has absolutely no popular support, it is safe to expect US retreats on other fronts as China and Russia start putting on the pressure elsewhere in South and Central America. Remember, China already controls the Panama Canal and has considerable influence on the west coast of Canada.

I suspect this is why Israel is being so aggressive with regards to the Golan Heights and Gaza, as they must recognize that their ability to act underneath the aegis of US protection is rapidly running out of time.

Remember, historically speaking, the more people move, the more people war:

The United States is home to nearly 20 percent of the globe’s migrant population, a new study finds. The Pew Research Center reveals in a new study that the U.S. has admitted more foreign nationals than any other country in the world. Roughly 18 percent of the world’s migrant population lives in the U.S., the study found.

About 44.5 million foreign-born residents now live in the U.S., far surpassing Germany’s 12.2 million foreign-born population and Russia’s nearly 12 million foreign-born population.

In total, the U.S. is home to more foreign-born residents than Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and France combined. The 44.5 million foreign-born population living in the country marks a nearly 108-year record high of immigration to the U.S.

That 44.5 million includes roughly 22 million naturalized citizens, 11 million other residents — including more than 1.5 million foreign temporary visa-workers — plus about 11 million illegal aliens.

Add in the second- and third-generation migrants, and you’re looking at around 85 million foreigners in a population of 310 million. That’s why I said, on a recent Darkstream, that the level of violence that can be reasonably anticipated in a US-breakdown scenario is Cultural Revolution-magnitude, which would indicate fatalities in the 50M to 100M range.

It’s a little startling to see a neocon like Michael “Faster Please” Ledeen opining that the Mueller investigation had its roots in the Swamp’s fear of General Flynn:

What, then, was it all about? I think I know. It was all about General Flynn. I think it began on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, when Flynn changed the way we did intelligence against the likes of Zarqawi, bin Laden, the Taliban, and their allies.

General Flynn saw that our battlefield intelligence was too slow. We collected information from the Middle East and sent it back to Washington, where men with stars on their shoulders and others at the civilian intel agencies chewed it over, decided what to do, and sent instructions back to the war zone. By the time all that happened, the battlefield had changed. Flynn short-circuited this cumbersome bureaucratic procedure and moved the whole enterprise to the war itself. The new methods were light years faster. Intel went to local analysts, new actions were ordered from men on the battlefield (Flynn famously didn’t care about rank or status) and the war shifted in our favor.

This earned him a following among some who worked for or with him, but it also gained him the enmity of those who had been cut out of “the chain of command.” By the time he was made head of DIA, Flynn had a real problem with the intelligence community, first because he had marginalized them, and for another reason: Flynn was determined to do a full-scale analysis of the (many) secret missions that had not been carried out over the years, and he wanted an accounting of the considerable funds allocated for them.

On the other hand, this could be an example of misdirection, because the neocons are more than a little entwined with the Swamp themselves.

The Macronistas are failing the 4GW test in France:

The French government is to deploy its military anti-terror force as reinforcement during Act 19 of Saturday Yellow Vest protests. The decision by President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, came after violence marred last weekend’s protests, spiking to levels not seen since December.

Many targets by the movement in Paris and other cities included known landmarks and stores or places seen as elitist, such as the Parisian restaurant Le Fouquet’s on the Champs Elysées…. After the weekend, the French government sacked the top police official in Paris, 66-year-old Michel Delpuech, for failure to keep the protests in the capital from spiralling out of control.

It’s only a matter of time before the French praetorians rebel and side with the nation against the globalist government.

Either Kurt Schlichter has been perusing this blog or he’s simply observing the same things I am:

Nations famously tend to always try to fight the last war, and what America is preparing to do today with the newly assertive China is no exception. The problem is our last war was against primitive religious fanatics in the Middle East and China is an emerging superpower with approaching-peer level conventional capabilities and an actual strategy for contesting the United States in all the potential battlespaces – land, sea, air, space and cyber. America is simply not ready for the Pacific war to come. We’re likely to lose.

In Desert Storm, Saddam Hussein was dumb enough to choose to face a U.S. military that was ready to fight its last war. That last war was the Cold War, where the Americans were prepared to fight a Soviet-equipped conscript army using Soviet tactics. And Saddam, genius that he was, decided to face America and its allies with a Soviet-equipped conscript army using Soviet tactics, except fractionally as effective as the Russians. It went poorly. I know – I was there at the VII Corps main command post as his entire army was annihilated in 100 hours.

Chances are that the Chinese will not choose to fight our strengths. In fact, those chances total approximately 100{8378aafe0df5a8211310d3c8e9d482552a62e5d1e3375b859a1f05ab4de12dda}.

It’s called “asymmetrical warfare” in English. What it’s called in Chinese I have no idea, but Sun Tzu wrote about it. Don’t fight the enemy’s strength; fight his weakness. Strike where he is not. Spread confusion about your intentions; force him to lash out. It’s all there in The Art of War; it’s just not clear anyone forming our current American military strategy has read it. Maybe they would if we labeled it “Third World” literature and said checking it out would check a diversity box for promotion.

We seem intent on fighting not the enemy we face but the enemy we want to face. This is a rookie mistake. And we’ve built our strategy around that error.

The point about the way we have switched to the German strategy in favoring quality over quantity is a very good point too. The roles have changed; China is now in the place of the USA in terms of manufacturing capability that the US was vis-a-vis Germany and Japan in WWII.